Free Thought Lives

After Christchurch, Remember the Victims, But Resist the Urge to Blame

The terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand—the largest terror event in Australasian history—carried out against a migrant community in a place of worship has left us all in shock. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Arden, has described this attack as an attack on all New Zealanders.

Part of the shock comes from the feeling that these types of events don’t happen here. Not in Australia, not in New Zealand. We are small, quiet countries, where people feel safe. Random violence is not a feature of everyday life, let alone on this scale.

People deal with shock and grief in different ways. Some people mourn. Others get angry. Many of the early reactions to the event have expressed legitimate anger about the lack of action taken over violent, right-wing extremism. Observers have been warning about the toxicity of online echo-chambers and their potential to foment hatred and motivate people to commit violence for some time now.

Much of the anger is directed at big tech companies who are seen as making a profit via the “rabbit hole” algorithm, which prompts people to consume more extreme content with each click. It is noteworthy that the Christchurch attack was live-streamed on Facebook, reposted on YouTube and discussed on Reddit before any of these platforms had a chance to react. The incentive structure which grants a psychopath instantaneous worldwide fame is powerful and real. And this will not be the last time that it is exploited.

Others have also expressed anger at what they view to be the inherently racist nature of Australian society—the society from which this monstrous terrorist emerged. To add to the shock of the massacre itself, an Australian Senator, Fraser Anning with extreme and racist views (who was elected via a special recount when another Senator was made ineligible on just 19 votes) has blamed the attack on the victims — describing Muslims as the “usual perpetrators” of violence—and linking the violence to immigration, not the terrorist himself.

The vileness of Senator Anning’s statements notwithstanding, it should also be noted that while the terrorist who committed this atrocity is Australian, he did not cite any Australians as inspirations for his actions. He cited Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik and Canadian mass-shooter Alexandre Bissonnette, among others. This vicious strain of neo-fascism that we are seeing emerge across the West is influenced by figures such as the Russian theorist Aleksandr Dugin, who aims to destroy Western liberal democracy itself. Somewhat ironically, extreme ethno-nationalism is a thoroughly international phenomenon and is not reflective of local communities and local concerns.

In the wake of the attack, blame has also been levelled at liberals such as Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, Sam Harris and, surprisingly, Chelsea Clinton:

Here is a pregnant Chelsea Clinton being accosted in public by NYU students blaming her for the New Zealand massacre. You are free to have your opinion, but how you express yourself matters. Note how Clinton never shuts down or stops listening, despite not deserving any of this. pic.twitter.com/V6XcC3lWCB

In Australia the attack has been blamed on the Australian media, in Britain the British media, in the US on Donald Trump. The tragedy has become fuel for the fire of the internal culture wars of each country—domestic culture wars that are draining our finite reserves of mutual social trust.

The disruptive nature of the internet has been compared many times to the disruption caused by the printing press. And the frightening realisation one has when making this analogy is that the printing press precipitated hundreds of years of religious wars. We do not yet know what the long-term impact of the internet will be—obviously, it will be both good and bad, and most likely the upside will vastly outweigh the downside—but we must also be prepared for a fragmenting of our societies, and their continual fracturing along ideological and tribal lines.

While the problem of what to do about the dispossessed young male is obviously not a new one, the technologies which allow its toxic effects to be externalised onto the rest of us are. It is unclear how best to solve this problem or if it can be solved at all, without destroying the civil liberties that make liberal democracies worth living in. The best we can do in the short-term is to return again and again to the better angels of our nature and try to keep these horrific events in perspective. Ancient religious texts can guide us towards lessons that open our minds and soften our hearts, and a long-view of history can help us understand that such events are shocking because they are so rare.

We must also not jump to conclusions about the inherently racist nature of Australian society. One-quarter of Australia’s population was born overseas, one half of all Australians has a parent who was born overseas and one-fifth of Australians speak a language other than English at home. Sixty percent of migrants say they feel a great sense of belonging.

This is not to minimise the pockets of extremism that do exist—and which may be growing. But we should be precise as well as nuanced with our words. Portraying Australia as an irredeemably racist nation is not a good strategy for bringing communities together. We don’t foster cohesion by apportioning blame to others. We foster cohesion by emphasising our sameness and our shared values.

In times like this I look to leaders like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who has emphasised our common humanity. Asking for “Sympathy and love for all Muslim communities,” and to remember the victims who “have chosen to make New Zealand their home” she reminds us that “it is their home. They are us.”

Claire Lehmann is the founding editor of Quillette. Follow her on Twitter @clairlemon

Read the essay. Of course it’s on the rise, and for perfectly good reasons, unfortunately. And for some horrible reasons, as well, obviously. If allegedly educated people like yourself can’t find the sympathetic minutiae in their grievances – as you insist on doing with those of Islamists even in the wake of something on the scale of 9/11 – then brace yourselves for a bumpy future. You’re not going to Nazi-punch your way through this problem in your own War on Terror. You have to find what they get right about the problem and address that. Because if it’s all just a hallucination, then what is there to talk about?

Nations exist for a reason – they always have, and will only give way to globalism if the transition is voluntary.

If it is coerced – if it is not built on consent and trust but on elites manipulating and conquering people who are robbed of their right of self-governance – globalism is just another empire.

I fear that elites and a media so eager to see globalism implemented that they are willing to embrace any means are dividing into identity tribes, in ways that pressure us to become increasingly hostile if the real problems are not addressed.

Well you and this author can continue to be naive and ignore the rose of white nationalism across the far reaches of the world if you want, this ignoring the problem…but many educated people like myself cannot.

The figure of 60,000 toll is a claim made by the Be Heard Project, an initiative of the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative Christian lobby group based in Washington DC. They have been unable to provide the sources they’ve used to produce this figure.

There’s no doubt the toll from the violence, both Christian and Muslim is in the many thousands, but while Boko Haram is the main protagonist on the Muslim side, the many protagonist on the Christian side is the Nigerian Army and human rights groups have solid evidence that the Nigerian army has murdered at least 8,000 Muslims, the total number of victims likely far higher.

All figures are only estimates, as you have indicated. It is impossible for any one to know the exact number of killings. I should have been more fulsome in my explanation that the 60,000 killed relates to Nigeria and across West Africa. It is an estimate also given by the Institute for Economics and Peace, in their Global Terrorism Indices, and quoted in the Hansard record for the UK Parliament, House of Lords, 28th June 2018. But whether that figure is tens of thousands or thousands doesn’t make it less or more palatable. Not only Christians, but many Nigerian Shia Muslims have been killed by the larger Sunni Muslim population, and the Nigerian army whose current head, Tukur Yusuf Buratai, is a Sunni Muslim not a Christian. The lethal enmity between Shia and Sunni runs deep in Nigeria, as does the divide between Christians and Muslims. The silence is still deafening.
Neither are there any tears, or commemoratives, for the thousands being persecuted and killed for their beliefs, murdered by extremists in Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Burma, China, Colombia, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran , Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Laos, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauretania, Mexico, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine Territory, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen.
We don’t care? This doesn’t matter? I hope not. There is no silence, only . . . a deafening scream.

Yes, “succinctly and eloquently said.” Part of the problem is that this eloquence tends to go only in one direction. When white nationalists murder innocent Muslims, the rest of us white pluralists are all eloquence and solidarity. But when Islamist extremists murder Muslim moderates, Christians, Jews, and atheists (i.e. “infidels”), it would be nice to get some reciprocation from the Muslim community. It would be nice if Muslim leaders the world over stood up and shouted their love and solidarity with the rest of humanity in the face of terror from their own extremists. That sometimes happens; but unless the MSM is suppressing Muslim voices, it doesn’t happen nearly as often or as pervasively as it should.

I don’t think that it is accurate to criticize politicians on the right like Pauline Hanson and Fraser Anning as giving rise to the beliefs that extremists like the Christchurch murderer hold. However, I do think that they legitimize these beliefs in some people who think ‘Yeah, that’s what I think. I’m not crazy if our representatives think the same thing I do’.

I’m glad you put out a quick synopsis of this tragedy, Ms. Lehmann. TY.
What was done by this person (allegedly) is obviously abhorrent.
I have seen the vid of this attack. I have also seen ISIS vids. Though they haunt my memory, it is important to understand true horror/evil.
I am very unsure that such horiffic crimes can be labeled on the political spectrum, unless..
When you have a religion that declares itself to be: religious; cultural ; political, with a stated goal.
When I see the horrific sectarian violence within Islam, this is a aberration.
Maybe I know too much…

The fiat of violence is a integral tenant of islam.
Religion, culture, politics…”bamn”.
This is not a secret.
Even now, the islam ‘comnunity’ is attempting to use Sharia, to get the bodies released early.
Who is gaming who?

Don’t Muslims have very specific religious requirements for handling the dead? The bodies need to be buried relatively quickly. But no, let’s just assume this is some huge, hateful conspiracy by Muslims to game the system by having their murdered family members buried in accordance with their faith. Guns kill a ridiculous amount of people, but gun culture isn’t violent. The people who got their heads blown off while praying are the violent ones. Is that what you’re arguing?

You’re spreading total bullshit about Islam, yet they’re the problem? Go find a mirror take a long look.

Islam requires that burial be done as quickly as possible, ideally within a day, but there has been no objection to the unavoidable delays that have been caused by the nature and scale of this event. Religions have to be pragmatic and adaptable to be successful, which is why Islam and Christianity are successful religions and Shintoism isn’t.

The bodies were not released before the processing of them was completed so you can relax. There is nothing wrong with people who are wanting the bodies of their loved ones back as quickly as possible putting pressure on authorities to do their jobs quickly, it’s called free speech.

That terror attack it was, like the Christchurch attack, also an action by terrorists from a neighboring country against a minority that the home state would have acted to protect if they could have. Egypt bombed terrorist camps in Libya in response.

If a Muslim goes postal and shoots a bunch of people, those on the right will say that Islam is incompatible with democracy and that this was the result of multiculturalism, and those on the left will say that this was a crazed individual acting alone and that his actions in no way reflect on the majority of law-abiding Muslims.

If a white guy goes on a shooting spree, those on the right will say that this was a crazed individual acting alone, and those on the the left will say that this is the inevitable outcome of societal racism and that every white person alive is complicit.

Both sides will claim either that it is perfectly understandable to be afraid to leave your house, or alternatively that the threat of these kinds of violence is exaggerated, depending on who committed the massacre and consequently what narrative the speaker is trying to push.

Depending on who is speaking, remedies may include hashtag activism, demanding that white people engage in greater levels of personal penitence for their racist existence, banning video games, banning rock and/or rap music with offensive lyrics, bombing or invading a country with only tenuous connections to the events in question or demanding the impeachment or removal of a politician that they do not like.

Both are results of horrible policies with predictable results. Blame game is the characteristic trait of dysfunctional societes, which are unable to deal with them systemically.

I predicted nativist backlash around 2012, the moment the refugee crisis started and some politicians (Merkel) and some countries (Sweden) decided that virtue signaling is more important than long term consequences, generally proving that the European Union is a huge mistake, because it’s simply impossible to reach a consensus on fundamental questions.

There would be no ISIS intifada in Europe without it, nor Christchurch or Pittsburg shootings. But hey- I’m a conservative nativist, don’t listen to me, I’m one of the bad guys. I’m sure we’ll reach left wing utopia once all evil people like me are in gulags.

@Bab – Yours is by far the best comment I have read so far. I fear, however, that tribalism is deeply ingrained survival mechanism and that, contrary to popular opinion, solid individualism requires a major effort and massive will power. It seems to me that human beings are lost and frightened unless they can identify with a group or tribe or community (however you want to name it). Someone said earlier that nations are a “fiction”. They were far from being a fiction so long as aggregated along clear cultural values and commonality of traits. Migration and ethnic and cultural amalgamation may, in time make the nation state irrelevant, but the artificial speeding up of this process is bound to cause anxiety and drive to action in proportion to the size of that anxiety. At the higher end of that spectrum there will always be homicidal maniacs and people who have no hesitation resorting to terrorism. My take on this is that forcing any massive cultural and value change on established communities will beget unrest and, at the fringes, violence. It does not take much in either direction. Social engineering and restructuring must be slow and careful, absent which massive social upheaval is inevitable. The Western Civilization has ben marching steadily and calmly towards inclusion, pluralism, and multicultural tolerance, until the political Left lost patience with the slow progression and decided to force massive scale social experimentation and to oppress political resistance. If you ask them why, they would probably answer something stupid like Justine Trudeau said when asked why he appointed cabinet members based on gender quotas as opposed to merit: “Because is 2015!”. But the real reason is simply that they have concluded that they are now in a position to force their values and policies on the rest of us with impunity and even a little bit of “gusto”. They are pushed back – thankfully mostly democratically around the world.
I have the perspective of a political refugee/immigrant and my own experience has not been one in which I sought to impose values on the community that gave me asylum and shelter. On the contrary, I always was and continue to be very motivated to belong and adapt. In other words, I could not conceive not belonging or not integrating. In my case – gratitude is not a negligible factor – but I would do it anyway because I can not conceive on forcing change on a hospitable host. Long story short, disenfranchised and violent morons will always be along for the ride. Social cohesion and peace cannot be maintained while imposing fast and dramatic social change. The murder of innocents including women and children is a despicable act of cowardice and most importantly a public acknowledgment of raging frustrated impotence and inadequacy, whether it comes from the left or the right of the political spectrum.

Constantin – thanks for the reply – I just have a couple of points. I think even without tribalism, we would be seeing more of this sort of behaviour mainly because of the increasingly large numbers of disaffected men – a lot of the perpetrators seem to losers in life, and more particularly losers in love, and even in countries with very little multiculturalism (there was a notable spree killing in Japan a couple of years ago) you see these sorts of incidents happening more and more.

The decline of the nation state plays a role, though. At some point, you have to ask whether the endgame is a situation where the nation is merely a geographical expression or unit of administration, – whether it consists of simply a group of people who happen to be occupying the same stretch of land at any given time, without anything else necessarily to bind them together. If that is the case, then that bodes ill for social democracy, for civil society and many other things. And the issue for the majority ethne, those who would have previously invested their identity with the nation-state, is that if we are to be a tribal society, we had better find ourselves a tribe.

Saw file, I take a genuine Libertarian view on these matters, that people are individuals and not members of Borg like collectives – incapable of acting independently of their wider group. So yes, I’m including Muslims that see infidels collectively as enemies as fascists, and I include misandrous feminists as fascists, and I include all the commenters on Breitbart that have cheered this horrific event because to them a Muslim is a Muslim, and I include the likes of Senator Fraser Anning. These fascists all have more similarities than differences in the way they think.

They can be fascists, but then again the Bolsheviks were a multicultural genocide gang who engaged in large-scale genocide of disfavored ethnicities, just ask the Ukrainians.

Some cultures or peoples may not be entirely incompatible but are sufficiently incompatible that bringing them together under one roof is insanity. This will be the cumulative lesson of events of this sort and the more sure to come. Like war, globalism and multiculturalism are cancers that bring out the worst in all parties, European, Arab or whatever.

Western countries need to follow Japan’s lead and close their borders, encourage development of clear ethnic majorities where they can and carve out separate ethnic homelands where large ethnic minorities can be dominant. All efforts should be made to discourage multiculturalism. Calling such exercises Hate simply makes one appear an irrational sentimentalist.

The US has diverse cities and that can change quickly either way depending on public policy.

Halting immigration for 40 years, deporting non citizens, promoting natalism for historic populations, retracting benefits for non citizens, setting immigration thresholds by prosperity of country of origin or other similar measure, ending multi-generational welfare are all policies that would have demographic effects favorable to establishing a clear ethnic majority or encouraging ethnic assimilation and thus easing the poison of multiculturalism.

People forget Teddy Roosevelt’s pro-natalism and concurrent selective immigration policies increased the European % of the population thus ushing in an American mono cultural consciousness which was more healthy than our current setup. It can be done again.

Curle, after some thought I disagree, I know of no religion, race or culture that cannot coexist in the same society as any other group, there may be haters within such groups but most members of all such groups can get along.

Thankyou Claire, probably the best piece I’ve read on this attack – sincere, sensible and from the heart. Thankfully no mealy-mouthed cliches.

Australia is not a racist country. All our institutions – legal, educational, welfare etc – plus freedom of movement, speech, employment and opportunity are available to all regardless of religion or race. There is no discrimination.

However, like all nations, there are racist individuals living here. They are to be found in all sectors of our community and, while they are a minority, make themselves heard in such loud and nasty ways (the booing of Adam Goodes, for example) that it sadly overshadows the goodwill and kindness of the majority.

Interpreting this evil, cowardly act by an Australian individual as part of our increasingly divisive cultural/identity wars can only make things worse, increase the hate and make it more likely to happen again.

Interpreting this evil, cowardly act by an Australian individual as part of our increasingly divisive cultural/identity wars can only make things worse, increase the hate and make it more likely to happen again.

Not only did the killer fully expect this very thing to happen, he was counting on it, because he knew no one with any investment in the culture wars could possibly resist using his vile actions as an excuse to go up on their soapboxes again.

It seems that Tarrant read and understood Osama bin Laden’s manifesto about the 9/11 attacks; bin Laden wanted to lure the US into it’s own Teutoburg Forests and Dien Bien Phus. He succeed beyond anything we imagined possible at the time.

All of the adjectives being used, “horrific,” “grief,” “anger,” are naïve. In war all of that falls away and the dead are simply the dead.

I remember back on the morning of January 31, 1968, we (our average age was 19) had to pick our 15 year old Vietnamese hooch orderly out of the wire after the local battalion of the Viet Cong tried and failed to over run our air strip. I felt bad, had a few beers and that was it. A few days later my door gunner was killed. I felt bad and I had a few beers and that was it. It was like that for all 15 of my company who were killed over the year I was in Vietnam. Better them than me, I told myself.

Why are 50 dead Muslims in Christchurch to be grieved more than 50 dead Muslims in a wedding party in Iraq?

Death in war is not like death in peace time.

I add this: One of the fundamental natural rights is freedom of association; the freedom to pick with whom you want to live and whose morals and values you want to be associate with. When governments attempt to meddle with this fundamental freedom of the governed they are looking for more trouble than they possibly handle.

I am curious to know how many Moslem’s were being murdered simultaneously in Moslem dominated countries. While this sorry excuse for a man was murdering these Moslem’s in a secular country. It seems the Moslem outrage machine is loudest when the killings happen in a non Moslem countries. The Turks want to reopen the Hagia Sophia as a mosque in faux reaction to this mass murder.

Everybody’s outrage machine is loudest when its someone else doing it. Imagine if it were Muslims shooting up US schools on a regular basis rather than disgruntled white men. When a bunch of Black nationalists carried weapons into the Californian state assembly in 1967, even the NRA supported gun control bills that were signed into law by none other than Ronald Reagan.

On the flipside, one of Ta-Nehisi’s friends was killed by a police officer, and he barely wrote a word about it because the officer that shot him was black. He probably would have written a 3-volume hagiography about the guy if he’d been shot by a white cop.

We really need to coin a Latin phrase for this – something about the external threat always being feared more than the internal one.

Hilarious. No, let’s not blame anybody. Every other piece on this site manages the blame the “left” for anything and everything, but now that your own bullshit has a body count you’re not interesting in pointing fingers?

I look forward to tomorrow’s Quillette article blaming this on the left.

Exactly. This is quite rich. Never wait a minute to blame anything on the left, Muslims, or the humanities, but surely white supremacy has nothing to do with this. Nothing to see, carry on. Lehman, how dare you tell people who to blame on THIS site? YOU? The lack of self awareness here is baffling.

Our biggest challenge comes not from other cultures but the peculiar capacity for self-hatred that exists in the English-speaking world. Far more self-hate comes from middle-class white progressives than I see from other cultures.

Our civilisation gave us democracy, freedom of expression and rule of law, but we’re expected to throw it away?

Y all these mental gymnastics? Fact is, the core tenets of islam are to become a religion of peace by converting or killing all unbelievers. The fact that ppl breeze right by that in addition to ignoring what is happening in all countries with muslims seems unreal! Ppl r scared both by islam & what can be called wishful utopian delusions of apologists fm all govt parties. Did u ppl still not get charlie hebdo? Wow…wake up! Islam has never had peaceful relations with anyone. Never! So if ppl continue to endanger the futures of our children & theirs, then easy to predict this will get messy. Facts, not fantasy. Maybe quillette is too feminine? I don’t know!

Cameron Tremblay, ever read the Hebrew Bible? You’ll find lots of scripture in it in which God encourages genocide of non-believers, inarguably more so than in the Koran. The reason that Jewish people are not all genocidal maniacs is because there’s far more in the Hebrew Bible than just the preaching of genocide, and exactly the same is true of the Koran, there are many passages in the Koran that encourage Muslims to live in peace with non-believers. The problem is that fascists like yourself are only interested in seeing the pro-war Surah, passages that don’t suit your hate mongering you ignore, if you applied the same methodology to the Hebrew Bible – as other fascists have done, you’d be a rabid anti-Semite fascist instead.

Your claim that “Islam has never had peaceful relations with anyone” is patently untrue, in most countries in the world Muslims live in peace with those of other faiths, all you need to do to discover this is discover that there are actually very few countries in the world in which there is conflict between the Muslim population and non-Muslims.

But discovering such an obvious fact would go against your fascist core beliefs wouldn’t it?

@Andrew W……I think the perspective that few countries have conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim populations is a rather low resolution one Andrew. The kind of large scale outbreaks, as in Myanmar recently, and India periodically, are fortunately rarer, but the clash of values between the tolerance/diversity which characterises liberalism as an ideology, and the universality/minimal acceptance of “others” of Islam as an ideology, is now playing out at the smaller scale of terror and social unrest, pretty much everywhere.in the West. The terrible irony for NZers,who are so proud of their acceptance of “others”,is that the Christchurch terror had Muslims as its victims.

There must be more honest practical management of the problem in the West. And that can only begin when everybody has taken off their rose tinted glasses, not just to look hard at their culture’s own capacity for pathological behaviour, but also Islam’s.

As I’ve commented in reply to Steersman below, Europe has taken in a flood of immigrants and failed to ensure those people integrated into the host society, that was asking for trouble. There are though around the world about 140 countries that have significant Muslim populations, the vast majority of which have a stable relationship between Muslims and those of other faiths. The problems are the (newspaper selling) exceptions not the rule.

However if you make a sentiment analysis using text analysis tools then you will find the Bible edges out the Islamic texts but you need to understand how sentiment analysis works. For example s sentence begining with ‘Thou shalt’ will be picked up as aggresive. To me the political violence is much more of a concern because they are inspirational to terrorists.

tibbles, The Center for the Study of Political Islam is an organization with an Islamophobic agenda, it is most certainly not ideologically objective in its nature so I’m not buying anything it claims anymore than I would a site created by Islamists.

I was going to respond to him but thought it wasn’t worth it. It would be helpful if he studied some ancients Scholars. There are so many pieces to this including ancient story telling communication genres such as hyperbole, idioms, etc. and then there’s the other side of the story which is the ancient contextual backdrop of barbarians who really did routinely sacrifice children, etc . much of the ancient narrative is, don’t be like them but fight them if necessary. Big mistake to read it through a post enlightenment filter. And it’s a big mistake when people make Old Testament characters into heroes.

Lydia, the only studying I need to do to determine if the God of the Hebrew Bible encouraged violence, including genocide, against non-Jews and peoples that didn’t abide by that Gods moral codes is read the Hebrew Bible. You can do the same, and you know damn well you’ll find plenty of killing in Gods name.

Here we go with the moral relativism canard by AW. Just as sure as the sun rises in the east I was waiting for this.

Query: If we are going tit-for-tat about literal intepretations of the various holy books in say, the past decade by extremeists. Who, by a LARGE margin, do you think wins the lion’s share of carnage and bloodshed based on religious dogma. I’ll give you a hint, it is the newest of the ‘Abrahamic’ faiths out of the big three.

Just stop. People like you that are afraid to live in objective reality and NAME the issue are a huge part of the problem. Not to mention the disingenous virtue signaling by the proprietor of this site with this article as well.

It is extremely difficult to fix an issue that most people have the moral cowardice to not even enunciate.

“I was waiting for this.”
Which is no doubt why you found something that wasn’t even there. My point should be obvious to a rational person, claiming that Muslims are unable to get along with people of other faiths because violence in Islamic texts against non-Muslims is mentioned several times is as valid as claiming Jews are unable to get along with people of other faiths because violence against non-Jews is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible, the religious texts of successful religions are diverse and provide many options on how to deal with non-believers.

“If we are going tit-for-tat about literal intepretations of the various holy books in say, the past decade by extremeists.”

Illogical, why the past decade? These texts were written thousands of years ago, all three religions have had periods of peaceful co-existence with other faiths, all three religions have had periods of war with other faiths.

“People like you that are afraid to live in objective reality . . .”

No sunshine, rather than look at what hits the headlines and gets all the attention as you do I look at the reality, which is that the vast majority of those adhering to all three faiths would rather live their lives in peace and raise their families in peace, which is exactly what the vast majority are able to do.

Part of the reason there is minimal conflict in the west between Muslims and others is white people are weak. When Muslims want something the local politicians give them what they want as they don’t want to be labeled as racist. They are frightened to make a fuss and quick to label any white person who does make a fuss as racist.

@Andrew
“the problems you mention end when the bad behaviour is confronted”

My point is that the “bad behaviour” isn’t confronted.

Muslims are very pushy in their demands and western countries are not standing up to them. I’ll be very interested to see what happens to the two UK and American ISIS brides in the news lately. My expectation is the west will relent and they will eventually be allowed to return.

I hope I am wrong.

Another example of the weakness of the west towards Islam is the fact that after the recent shooting in NZ, the NZ pm wore a head covering to meet with the Muslimc ommunity. Why? Couldn’t she express remorse in a western country without covering her head? Where is the feminism? It may seem trivial, but it shows the cuckolding of the west.

Sean, so what happened to the Muslim men in Rotherham who committed sex crimes? My understanding is that they were put on trial, and that those who had failed to do their jobs in investigating were reprimanded, forced to resign or otherwise punished.

The NZ PM wore the headscarf because she was going to a mosque, she does not wear one just because she’s meeting Muslims. I also respect other peoples customs when entering their places of worship or their homes, if the customs were to be unacceptable to me I wouldn’t enter.

Andrew
You’re talking about the Rotherham men going to jail after raping over 1,000 girls. Do you really believe jail is going to change their behaviour? Some of those jailed have already been released.In other cities, this pattern was repeated. What is being done to confront this behaviour? Do we wait until girls are raped and then punish the offenders? How is this confronting the problem to prevent girls going through this?

You talk about integrating Muslims, how would you integrate these offenders or the many other Muslim men who believe women are property and believe western women are sluts because they don’t meet Muslim modesty standards?

As for the NZ pm, why meet in a mosque? Why not meet in a community hall or other neutral venue that wouldn’t be offensive where condolences could still be offered? If she believes in equality (as a feminist leader of the country) why not insist men cover their heads too in the same way? It’s to show how woke she is. She isn’t the only western leader who would do this either.

Sean, I’m having trouble following your logic, you were claiming that Muslims who broke the law in England weren’t punished because doing so was too scary for white people and that not punishing them was the more peaceful option. But they were punished, yet you fail to mention all the civil strife, the up-rising by the Muslim community in defense of their men whom were, in your mind, perfectly entitled to commit such acts in the eyes of Muslims because you believe Muslims think committing sexual assault is a Muslim mans right under Islamic law.

“Do we wait until girls are raped and then punish the offenders?”

That’s how it’s usually done, I know of no country on Earth that charges or punishes people for rape before they’ve committed the rape, you have an interesting, even unique, approach to justice. I suppose such a system might exist in some totalitarian state somewhere.

“You talk about integrating Muslims, how would you integrate these offenders or the many other Muslim men who believe women are property and believe western women are sluts because they don’t meet Muslim modesty standards?”

I suggest you don’t even allow such men into the country, but I also think that you’re naive in your belief that Muslim women are no more than property, reality is that Muslim woman are just as shrewd as Western women, they know how to steer their husbands just as Western women do, the old saying, one that women understand and most men don’t: that a man without a wife is like a ship without a rudder applies in Muslim households as well.

I bet you didn’t know that on average the rate of female parliamentary representation in Muslim countries is higher than it is in the US federal government.

“As for the NZ pm, why meet in a mosque?”

Because she chose to, it was members of the Muslim community that were murdered, if it had been another religious group, Buddhists, Christians or Jews she would certainly gone to them at their place of worship.

You stated ” the problems you mention end when the bad behaviour is confronted” By your logic, the “bad behaviour” has been confronted because these men went to prison and therefore it will end. So these men won’t reoffend? This won’t happen again with other Pakistani-British men because these men went to prison? I don’t agree.

The bigger problem is that this attitude is widely spread in a large number of Muslim men. When you have a consistent problem you seek to both punish those who offended and also to take measures to stop it happening again. For example, knife crime in the UK wasn’t that bad until a few years ago because police had the power to stop and search people. Being a PC state this was stopped and knife crimes have soared. If you re implemented the stop and search this would reduce the stabbings. What is the equivalent to stopping the grooming and raping?

Your comment “That’s how it’s usually done, I know of no country on Earth that charges or punishes people for rape before they’ve committed the rape, you have an interesting, even unique, approach to justice” is childish. You took one thing I wrote out of context. My point is get proactive to prevent this from happening as the 2 sentences on either side of the sentence you quoted note.

“Because she chose to, it was members of the Muslim community that were murdered, if it had been another religious group, Buddhists, Christians or Jews she would certainly gone to them at their place of worship.” She chose to because she wants to be woke; to bolster her leftist credentials.

“By your logic, the “bad behaviour” has been confronted because these men went to prison and therefore it will end. So these men won’t reoffend?”

There’s no reasonable way you could conclude that I’m suggesting that these men won’t re-offend, given that re-offending rates are typically high for most offenders.

“She chose to because she wants to be woke; to bolster her leftist credentials.”

I disagree, I’ve no doubt that if this horrific event happened in Britain in the ’80’s that Margaret Thatcher would have done exactly the same and joined with Britain’s Muslim community in the way that Ardern has. You might find this hard to understand but the leaders of Western democracies understand that they represent all of the people in the countries they govern and that they are morally obligated to support them if they’re attacked in this way.

Virtually all middle eastern countries are less diverse today than they were 40 years ago–and certainly 70 years ago. Whether due to civil war (Lebanon, Iran, Iraq) or simply tumultuous attempts to end dictatorship, the consistent consequence is that religious minorities (Coptic Christians, Yazidi, Zoroastrians, Bahais, Maronite Catholics, Jews) become targets. Egypt once had a huge Christian population. Lebanon had a Christian majority.

Among the exceptions are the oil-rich Peninsula countries (UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, but not Saudi Arabia) all of which owe their diversity to guest workers. Rarely do non-Muslim immigrants earn citizenship.

The only Middle Eastern country that routinely and voluntarily accepts religious minorities as citizens with equal political power to the native born is Israel–the same country responsible for 95% of the Middle East’s patents.

Without any denial of Christianity’s historic atrocities and Judaism’s questionable behavior in Gaza, the fact remains that conflict and violence are routine among Islamic communities wherever they are a minority, and where they are a majority, they routinely seek the annihilation of the infidels. Peaceful co-existence is the exception, not the norm.

If we ascribe these differences to the respective Holy Writ, we can at least postulate that Christianity’s comparative transcendence and adaptability comes from the textual transcendence of the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus. The Quran continues to wage holy war and questions the viability of the dhimmi up until the very end.

The important difference between Christianity and Judaism is that their books are constantly being revised and reformed to make their faiths more aligned to the times we live in. Unfortunately, apart from a small number of Muslims trying to reform the faith (whose lives, consequently, are often at risk) the word and ideas of Mohammad is cast in concrete (he wrote with the hand of Allah). To be revised or altered to be more in tune with the modern world is blasphemous and in many places punishable by death.
Judaism in particular has a long history of Jews arguing with their God over all sorts of things, something that just doesn’t happen in Islam.
Certainly many Muslims live in peace with those of other faiths, some are indeed secular, but the Koran stipulates the primacy of Muslims over non-believers, which I think the majority of religious Muslims absolutely believe.

Robin:
“The important difference between Christianity and Judaism is that their books are constantly being revised and reformed to make their faiths more aligned to the times we live in.”

I can’t even imagine where you got that chestnut from. Because no, the Hebrew Bible is the same today as it was a couple of thousand years ago, the components of the Catholic Bible are also unchanged from when it was written aproximately 16 to 18 centuries ago, there are protestant versions of the bible that are slightly different to the original, but they’re not “constantly being revised and reformed”.

What all of these Holy books do though is provide room for a multitude of interpretations for religious scholars to argue over and for believes to pick through to justify whatever they need to justify in the name of their God.

Simply not true Andrew, There are no eternal demands to kill and subjugate the other in the Hebrew Bible. The demands in Islam to kill unbelievers are an order that is permanent. And the ‘peace’ of Islam really is, “there will be peace only once the whole world either converts or submits”. Islam is really quite proud that it provides the “clear path”, the “straight path”, the “easy path”. It is easily understandable on these matters. That is why there is not a single Muslim majority country where religious minorities have equal rights – all Muslim majority nations are essentially apartheid nations, and no country where Muslims are a sizeable minority where there is no conflict with the majority. Islam is clearly itself a fascist creed. Only Islam definitively states its supremacy so precisely. For example a Muslim man being worth 3 times a Christian man or a Jewish man, or 6 time a Christian woman or a Jewish woman. A Muslim woman is worth half a Muslim man, which is still more than a Christian or Jewish man. This is Muslim law clearly stated.

“The demands in Islam to kill unbelievers are an order that is permanent.”
“there will be peace only once the whole world either converts or submits”.
“a Muslim man being worth 3 times a Christian man or a Jewish man, or 6 time a Christian woman or a Jewish woman.”

Great, you’ll be able to supply chapter and verse to support your claims then.

“A Muslim woman is worth half a Muslim man,” That’s based on the Koran stating the testimony of two women to be equal to the testimony of one man, not the same as a woman being worth half a man in everyday life. In reality women and men have different rolls within Islamic society and within the house, as is traditional in Christian culture as well. Having traditional rolls though does not bar women from high office, as is demonstrated by the fact that there is a higher ratio of women to men as representatives in government on average in Muslim countries than there is in federal government in the US.

” . . there is not a single Muslim majority country where religious minorities have equal rights – all Muslim majority nations are essentially apartheid nations, ”
and
“no country where Muslims are a sizeable minority where there is no conflict with the majority.”

You obviously haven’t traveled through Southern Asia and Africa because I can tell you first hand that those two claims are utter bullshit.

You know, I think it kind of sucks that I, an atheist, read your comment “You’ll find lots of scripture in it in which God encourages genocide of non-believers, inarguably more so than in the Koran,” which also includes “read the Hebrew Bible?” and I think to myself what is going on here?

I notice there is no substantiation. People, when someone doesn’t substantiate it, check it out.

In the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon TaNaKh (that’s an acronym) and which you call the Hebrew Bible. The “Ta” stands for Torah, “Na” stands for “nevi’im” (prophets), and “Kh”, stands “ketuvim” (sacred writings). A total of 24 books.

There are 74 mass killings committed, ordered, or approved by God. Not all them were genocide; I wouldn’t list the Red Sea’s drowning of Pharaoh’s army as one. But, I’ve included them all, even Moses killing those 3,000 fellow Hebrews who worshiped the golden calf.

Here’s a few of the (in)famous ones.

The Flood (Genesis 6-8)
The cities of the plain, including Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19)
The Egyptian firstborn sons during the Passover (Exodus 11-12)
The Canaanites under Moses and Joshua (Numbers 21:2-3; Deuteronomy 20:17; Joshua 6:17, 21)
The Amalekites annihilated by Saul (1 Samuel 15)

I don’t know whether 74 events count as “lots”. Using theological chronology, Genesis is year 1. Then there was the time of the Patriarchs, who are were doing all the begetting. Abraham was born about 1950 years after, and Exodus was in 2666. The Rededication of the Temple ends that theological period 4000 years after Genesis, so the Old Testament is a story of people doing things for that entire period and Abraham’s people doing things for 2050 theological years; an average of 1 mass killing per 54 theological years.

If there are a total of 100 – 200 events of all types, good and bad, then, yes, 74 is a lot. Are the 24 books of the TaNaKh about 100 to 200 events? Or is it many hundreds if not thousands? Suddenly, 74 doesn’t seem like lots. But, some people are more sensitive to such incidents, so it may feel like a lot. And there are the one-is-one-too-many perfectionists.

The first three events I mention are similar in that there was no human killer involved. In each case it was God, or an angel of God, who carried out the mass killings directly. So, no encouragement by God.

In the flood every one but Noah and his family were wiped out. Genocide against everyone in that one – practically omnicide. Did God encourage the descendants of Noah to unleash periodic floods as a reminder? No. A sanctioned-by-God form of punishment that the Hebrews may use too? No.

For the cities on the plain, let’s not forget it was Abraham who beseeched God to forgive and show mercy. He kept renegotiating to find smaller number of good men. When the two angels showed up at Lot’s home to investigate, the Sodomites appeared and demanded to have intercourse with the angels, who they mistook for humans with anuses. That sealed Sodom’s fate and God destroyed it. It could be argued that this established a precedent, but to my knowledge God didn’t tell the Hebrews, “You see what I did, you do so too.” But perhaps he silently approved.

God’s mass killing of Egypt’s firstborn sons did not set an example for Hebrews to follow. Of all the words with the suffix cide, you won’t find one to describe the killing of first born sons. There are regicide, amicicide, uxoricide, and many others, but the killing of firstborn sons as a phenomenon, say like matricide and fratricide, is so rare a word wasn’t created for it.

Thus, there are three cases of genocide perpetrated God, two of which are not repeated by others claiming “God commands it”, and the persecution of gays can attributed to God’s command. Two events of God definitely commands it. Is three, which is fewer than five, still lots?

Let’s keep in mind just as Christians believe in the Old Testament, so do Muslims – they are Abrahamic faiths, so they are inheritors (or appropriators, if you prefer). The four revealed books they acknowledge are the Tawra (Torah), the Zabur (Mizmor/Zemirot or Psalms), the Injil (Euangélion/Ewwangelliwon or the Gospel), and the Quran, which was revealed to Muhammad.

As Christians carry the legacy of the Old Testament (and its Deuteronomy), the Muslims carry it as well. It isn’t the Quran solely and disregard the other stuff. The Muslims also have other sacred books, not revealed by God but rather the record of Muhammed’s actions, words, and silent approvals called the Hadith. These cannot be disregarded. So, we take the mass killings of Tawra, Zabur, Injil, subtract those corrected by the final revelation which is the Quran, and we get the total. Are you sure it’s inarguable?

Andrew, for all your righteous zeal, I’m left with the impression you’re kind of regurgitating talking points used to wave away and even conceal mass killings by Muslims perpetrated against the houses of worship of Jews, Christians to include Copts, Hindus, Buddhists, and even other Muslims. Since the creation of Israel there’s been a lot of terrorism, and certainly within the last two to three decades the violent attacks (shootings, bombings, stabbings) on houses of worship by Muslims have been lopsided.

How many religiously inspired massacres are Jews perpetrating in recent times? They have these 24 books of 74 God-approved mass killings to use to justify such things – they use it to justify the creation of Israel, so it isn’t that they’re lost their knowledge of the books – yet there are very, very few actions. There was the attack at the Dome of the Rock back in ’82, which technically wasn’t a mass killing but I’ll mention it, and the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in ’94.

“Islam has never had peaceful relations with anyone” is patently untrue.

Yes, I’ll agree with you because absolutes such as never and always are easy to dispute in the context of history. We could find a single day of peace to topple that argument.

Here are a few of the 30+ notable events in Nigeria, many of them deemed massacres:
1) 2009 Boko Haram Uprising were about 1000 Christians were killed in July for refusing to convert.
2) 2010 Jos massacre where between 326 people and possibly more than a thousand were killed after Muslim youths set a Catholic church, filled with worshippers, on fire which led to reprisals and counter reprisals.
3) Christmas 2011 Northern Nigeria attacks where four churches were bombed by Muslims killing 41.
4) Christmas 2012 attack where 27 were shot to death in church and it then was torched in Abuja.

In Pakistan:
1) An attack on a church in Quetta in December 2017 that killed nine people and injured 57.
2) A suicide attack targeting Christians celebrating Easter at a Lahore playground in March 2016 left 70 dead and more than 340 wounded.
3) Two bomb blasts at churches in Lahore in March 2015 killed 14 and hurt more than 70 people.
4) A twin suicide bomb attack at a Peshawar church in 2013 left around 80 dead.
5) In 2009, nearly 40 houses and a church were burnt by a mob in Gojra town in Punjab, with eight people burnt alive.
6) In 2005, hundreds fled their homes in Faisalabad as churches and Christian schools were set on fire by a mob, after a resident was blamed for burning pages of the Koran.

These events are found time and time again around the world, for example Kenya, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Argentina, etc.

I reckon a few years from now people will remember Christchurch, but few know about the Amarnath pilgrimage massacres, which happened in three consecutive years in ’00, ’01, and ’02, or the Godhra Train Burning where a mob of 1000-2000 attacked a train filled with Hindu pilgrims and set it alight killing 59.

I would have to agree the response to Christchurch is disproportionate, which suggests to me there are other motivations underlying the performances, such as to use it to amplify the accusation of white supremacy to create a larger phantom than what exists.

Just in case someone decides to misconstrue what I’ve written, I don’t support initiating violence – people may respond in self defence. I’m an observer of a phenomenon I find peculiar and I try to understand the motivations behind it. I could be wrong, but seeing very little public outpouring of action and feelings in response to the events I listed, and the many many others I haven’t, I think it’s fair to ask “what’s going on?”, and deduce there is a political objective to this. Seeing the bollocking Chelsea Rodham-Hubbell took, it appears to me Muslims’ demand carte blanch.

But then you miss my main point, which is that despite the violence in their Holy Book Jews are not compelled to make war on everyone else, any violence that Jews do perpetrate is a product not of religion but of circumstance. Ditto for Islam.

People here have been making the claim that Muslims are compelled by their religion to make war on non-Muslims, that Muslims are compelled to take over and subjugate other peoples. But there are verses in the Koran to live peacefully with non-believers if peace is offered:
[2:193] “You may also fight them to eliminate oppression, and to worship GOD freely. If they refrain, you shall not aggress; aggression is permitted only against the aggressors.”

You mention the Nigerian conflict, do you think that it’s only the Muslims that are committing atrocities there? How about the 2015 Zaria massacre in which the Nigerian army open fire on Shiite’s in a religious procession killing 700 – 1000 people, why didn’t that get the coverage in Western media that the Christchurch massacre did? The reason the horrific events in Nigeria have relatively little coverage compared to ANY mass killings in Western countries is because there’s an obvious bias in Western media towards events in the West. AND YOU KNOW THAT DAMN WELL, so I see your inference that killings by Muslim in Nigeria aren’t covered because they’re killings by Muslims and that the Christchurch killing had more coverage because Muslims were the victims, as dishonesty on your part. Especially when you go on to highlight killings perpetrated by Muslims in Nigeria and ignore larger killings of Muslims by the Nigerian Army, most of which I’d bet long odds are suppress by the Nigerian military and we never hear of. The Nigerian military not being neutral in the Nigerian conflict but one of the protagonists.

You mention the Nigerian conflict, do you think that it’s only the Muslims that are committing atrocities there?

I mentioned that, and much more than that as well, didn’t I?

No, I don’t think Muslims are only committing atrocities, but this present situation in Nigeria started in northern Nigeria will the imposition of sharia law and then Boko Haram (presently split into two factions, Islamic State in West Africa [ISWA] and Jama’atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda’Awati Wal Jihad [JASDJ]) launched its attacks on all kinds of places – schools, police stations, military bases, vaccination centres, UN offices, etc.

What I find odd is in response to the partial the list of the 30+ Muslim attacks on houses of worship in Nigeria, as well as examples in Pakistan and mentions of the many other countries where this happens, which are religiously motivated attacks that I limited to houses of worship, is you provide me one incident of the army attacking Shia Muslims, which was not a religiously motivated attack, and may have even by instigated by them.

Sorry, but one and done does not substantiate your argument.

You can take a look at these two databases, one by the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and the other by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED)

In the country’s south and east, including major cities such as Lagos and Port Harcourt, Boko Haram–related violence is all but absent. That part of Nigeria is majority Christian and comprises many different ethnic groups but has few Kanuri [the group from which most of Boko-Haram originate]. . . . Boko Haram militant deaths, totaling 18,950, account for roughly 50 percent of all deaths in the conflict. . . . Civilians have borne roughly 45 percent of conflict-related deaths. [The military the remaining 5%.]. . . . The vast majority of these were the result of attacks by Boko Haram.

Both databases begin in 2011, which omits the attacks by Boko Haram beginning in 2009, such as the first one killing nearly 1,000 soldiers throughout northern Nigeria, beginning the Boko Haram Islamist Insurgency there. Having said that, the violence really began to increase in 2011.

Moreover from your one example you extrapolate outcomes, unsubstantiated ones, that sound kind of truthy. I’ve provided you the analysis by others that indicate what you assert to be true is in fact untrue. The number of incidents and the number of civilian deaths are very much at the hand of Boko Haram.

Do a google search for Christian militant groups of Nigeria. Hard to find as well as any organised acts akin to Boko Haram. Christian acts are often reprisals, a disorganised mob violence that though bloody is not sustained. I reckon if Nigeria Christian militias commensurate to Boko Haram were attacking mosques or other religious places, or even non-religious places you’d be able to cite that.

It appears you want the Nigerian Army to be a proxy for Christianity. This may be a mistake. Nigeria is roughly 49:49 Muslim-Christian split with the remaining indigenous faiths and practices.

The Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), the country’s largest Shia group, and it too has been attacked by Boko Haram. The reports I linked to previously state that Boko Haram is also responsible for the majority of attacks on mosques and killing Muslims.

Keep in mind, this is just Nigeria. Muslim violence is a world-wide phenomenon, which I mentioned in my first comment. You may dispute that this is Islam, but the people perpetrating sure consider it so. The fundamentalists are taking the word literally. When ISIL’s Islamic Caliphate was running the show in Syria and Iraq, it has implemented sharia law and ran the place this strict accordance to the Quran. They weren’t using an alternate Quran, a King James’s version so to speak.

The reason the horrific events in Nigeria have relatively little coverage compared to ANY mass killings in Western countries is because there’s an obvious bias in Western media towards events in the West. AND YOU KNOW THAT DAMN WELL, so I see your inference that killings by Muslim in Nigeria aren’t covered because they’re killings by Muslims and that the Christchurch killing had more coverage because Muslims were the victims, as dishonesty on your part.

How then do you explain the extensive coverage given to Christchurch by non-western media as well? (Due to site limitations on hyperlink and URLs, I changed each . to (dot) and removed the www and https.)

Japan Times
google(dot)com(dot)sg/search?q=christchurch+massacre+site:japantimes.co.jp&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:3/1/2019,cd_max:3/19/2019&ei=_GaSXKjwFquIr7wPq_6skAk&start=0&sa=N&ved=0ahUKEwio3sHfjpHhAhUrxIsBHSs_C5I4HhDy0wMITQ&biw=1680&bih=833

Korea Times
google(dot)com(dot)sg/search?q=christchurch+massacre+site:koreatimes.co.kr&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:3/1/2019,cd_max:3/19/2019&ei=32eSXNbfIqiImAWn7KK4Bg&start=0&sa=N&ved=0ahUKEwiWy-zLj5HhAhUoBKYKHSe2CGc4ChDy0wMIPA&biw=1680&bih=833

Contrast that coverage to that of the mass shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas in 2017.

Japan Times
google(dot)com(dot)sg/search?biw=1680&bih=833&ei=FHGSXNOMJ8Py8AWksoPABg&q=Sutherland+Springs%2C+Texas+shooting+site%3Ajapantimes.co.jp&oq=Sutherland+Springs%2C+Texas+shooting+site%3Ajapantimes.co.jp&gs_l=psy-ab.3…437682.437682..438884…0.0..0.154.154.0j1……0….2j1..gws-wiz.WFDOWF5IqLA

Korea Times
google(dot)com(dot)sg/search?biw=1680&bih=833&ei=t2-SXKi3CtGA8QWbyr_QBQ&q=Sutherland+Springs%2C+Texas+shooting+site%3Akoreatimes.co.kr&oq=Sutherland+Springs%2C+Texas+shooting+site%3Akoreatimes.co.kr&gs_l=psy-ab.3…53061.53061..53458…0.0..0.153.153.0j1……0….2j1..gws-wiz.1oV2Bx0P81Q

The New York Times
Christchurch
google(dot)com(dot)sg/search?biw=1680&bih=833&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A3%2F1%2F2019%2Ccd_max%3A3%2F19%2F2019&ei=3XWSXL-pHIXU-QautIfwAg&q=christchurch+massacre+shooting+site%3Anytimes.com&oq=christchurch+massacre+shooting+site%3Anytimes.com&gs_l=psy-ab.12…0.0..127285…0.0..0.0.0…….0……gws-wiz.5eoExBKUrvU

You’ll notice the disparity in coverage is worldwide. Both the NYTimes and the Guardian decided to amplify the event as well.

Yes, it is thought local news gets precedence (why may have led you to assert what you did), likely due to readership interest, media resources, and also bias. Perhaps this bias by journalists and editors may also have them decide to under report events whilst amplifying others including favoured narratives.

Further, how then do we explain the extensive coverage and the public response of the females abducted by Boko Haram? This wasn’t in the West. And by response, I’m including not only news reporters but also pundits and activists. There were even calls by these communities for Obama to send it the special forces. Where is this over amplified coverage and the overwrought pleas by the progressives in response to all the other Boko Haram violence? Why was this one event so much more special than all the other many hundreds?

Same deal with a runaway Saudi female. The progressives gets amped up over a person who is not in immediate physical danger in Thailand whilst at the same time a Pakistani Christian woman named Aasiya Noreen can’t find the same asylum when she’s in a country where many want to kill her. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun was granted asylum at a blink of an eye – certainly no investigation commensurate to that other applicants receive – and she was accompanied by Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, who introduced her to the press as “a very brave new Canadian.” That’s some special treatment right there. What do you think accounts for this?

These mass outpourings of performance in response to Christchurch, kidnapped Nigerian students, and a runaway Saudi are due to preferences given certain communities in reporting and in performative allyship. A Christian woman convicted blasphemy, sentenced to death, spent 8 years on death row, and upon the overturn of the conviction is he recipient of numerous death threats is left to languish.

I also don’t disregard that Christchurch provides an opportunity for progressives to further their work to erode civili liberties.

Thank you for your reply.
It looks like you’ve misinterpreted much of the data, Muslim deaths in the religious conflict in Nigeria have been at a higher rate than Christian deaths, with military deaths being comparatively low.

While I said that Western events dominate western media, I could have gone on to say that Western events are also covered at a very high level in world media, so to compare coverage of atrocities committed by Muslims with atrocities in which Muslims are the victims the comparison should be with such acts committed in Western nations with other acts committed in Western nations. So rather looking to see if Muslim deaths in terror events in the West get more coverage than Christian deaths in terror events in Nigeria in non-Western countries the measure should be if Muslim deaths in terror events in the West get more coverage than Christian deaths in terror events in the West in non-Western countries. They do not, if you search for coverage of the London and Paris terror attacks in the Media in China or Thailand or Korea or Nigeria you’ll find an amount of coverage that is similar to that of the Christchurch attack.

It’s safe to say that the reason you’re able to write such a long comment, spending so much time on it and misinterpret the data and then make a mistake in not comparing like with like is that you’re too emotionally attached to the topic under discuss. You’ve already decided which camp you’re in, you’re with the goodies, the other guys are the baddies. This form of rationalizing is a human trait, when we get emotionally attached to an issue we all do it because it’s a survival advantage in the environment we evolved in to demonize those you see as your enemy, to in your own mind exaggerate their evilness, and of course those on the other side do the same thing, they hate back. To be rational you have to step back and not let your biases and emotions get the better of you. This problem of human rationalizing is discussed in the recent The Mismeasurements of Stephen Jay Gould article. If you want to study it further you could read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.

It looks like you’ve misinterpreted much of the data, Muslim deaths in the religious conflict in Nigeria have been at a higher rate than Christian deaths,

No, I didn’t misinterpret the data. In fact, I even drew attention to in my comment. “The reports I linked to previously state that Boko Haram is also responsible for the majority of attacks on mosques and killing Muslims.”

It appears you either failed to read it or disregarded it.

It’s safe to say that the reason you’re able to write such a long comment, spending so much time on it and misinterpret the data and then make a mistake in not comparing like with like is that you’re too emotionally attached to the topic under discuss.

Ah, the old spent-time-on-it-equals-emotionally-involved attack.

If it’s safe to say so, and the objections are now on time management, how would you explain your 49 comments here? You spent a lot of time making assertions and generally failing to back them up. Perhaps the emotional attachment you mention is yours, yeah?

It’s safe to say that when called out with data, you resort to mischaracterisation and personal attacks as a way to sidestep.

Wow GG – fantastic post. I always love how Islam apologists go back 500+ years to find some Christian or Jewish atrocity to equate with Muslim atrocities today. How many Rabbis, Priests, Pastors, Sadhus, or Lamas have been legitimately accused of inciting their religion’s equivalent of Jihad (if such a thing even exists) in the past 100 years? On the other hand, if you type “Inman accused of Jihad” into Google you will get a whole lot of hits from around the world.

My deep condolences to the families of the victims of this horrific massacre.

Thank you for this wonderful article.

“The tragedy has become fuel for the fire of the internal culture wars of each country — domestic culture wars that are draining our finite reserves of mutual social trust.”

In Western societies psychopathy as ever preys on people’s envy and rivalry fanning intolerance and setting different groups against each other.
On the right side of the political spectrum it manifests itself in the extremist activities of white supremacists, neo-nazis. This right-wing variety propagates racism, hatred towards minorities, proudly upholding the legacy, doctrines and symbols of the German Nazis or embracing white supremacy.

Left-wing liberal psychopathy – traditionally leads the struggle in the name of the weak, minorities and the disadvantaged. It appeals and skilfully manipulates people’s compassion, generosity and moral values.

As for the relationship between the weak and the strong, minorities and majorities – instead of advancing negotiations, finding common grounds, reconciling the differences and cooperating by consent, the liberal extremists use identity politics to widen division between the groups, whipping up hostilities to create new waves of resentment to surf on, to build careers on. This psychopathic perversion of liberalism claims moral superiority, political and social expertise – antagonising, pitting different groups against each other:

A horribly tragic crime. And quite a good essay with a fairly broad coverage of the issues involved, along with some suggestions on the depth of the problems.

However, the closing quote of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – “Asking for ‘Sympathy and love for all Muslim communities’ …” – is little better than a retailing of wan hopes and pious platitudes, little better than a seriously problematic whitewashing of the systemic flaws in that culture and ideology.

Some of France’s most prominent figures, concerned about anti-Semitism, have signed a shocking manifesto aimed at curbing it.

…. In Islam, the Quran is considered divinely revealed; because it’s deemed to be the word of God, altering or deleting any part of the text would be blasphemous.

Not much prospect for reform there. And while the article goes on to quote French Muslims attempting to rationalize their dogma, the fact of the matter is that Islam is intrinsically incompatible with western democracies and our ideas on human rights. As the late British philosopher Anthony Flew cogently put it in a review of Ibn Warraq’s “Why I’m Not a Muslim”:

Why I am not a Muslim gives readers abundant excellent reasons for not becoming or remaining Muslims and also makes a compelling case for the conclusion that Islam is flatly incompatible with the establishment and maintenance of the equal individual rights and liberties of a liberal, democratic, secular state. It thus provides further support for Mervyn Hiskett’s more particular contentions about the threat to British traditions and values arising from our rapidly growing Muslim minority.

The flow of immigration into Canada from around the world, and in particular the flow from Muslim countries, means a pouring in of numbers into a liberal society of people from cultures at best non-liberal. But we know through our studies and observation that the illiberal mix of cultures poses one of the greatest dilemmas and an unprecedented challenge to liberal societies such as ours, when there is no demand placed on immigrants any longer to assimilate into the founding liberal values of the country to which they have immigrated. Instead, a misguided and thoroughly wrong-headed policy of multiculturalism encourages the opposite. ….

We should not allow bureaucratic inertia to determine not only the policy but the existing level of immigrant numbers and source origin that Canada brings in annually. We have the precedent of how we selectively closed immigration from the Soviet bloc countries during the Cold War years, and we need to consider doing the same in terms of immigration from Muslim countries for a period of time given how disruptive is the cultural baggage of illiberal values that is brought in as a result. ….

Lest any member wants to instruct me that my views are in any way politically incorrect, or worse, I would like members to note that I come before you as a practising Muslim who knows out of experience, from the inside, how volatile, how disruptive, how violent, how misogynistic is the culture of Islam today and has been during my lifetime, and how it greatly threatens our liberal democracy that I cherish, since I know what is its opposite.

Christchurch is a horrible tragedy. But we might be wise to give some serious thought to roots of it, not all of which are fed by white nationalism and xenophobia.

“. . .the fact of the matter is that Islam is intrinsically incompatible with western democracies and our ideas on human rights.”

But then you go on to quote “a practising Muslim who knows out of experience, from the inside, how volatile, how disruptive, how violent, how misogynistic is the culture of Islam today and has been during my lifetime, and how it greatly threatens our liberal democracy that I cherish, since I know what is its opposite.”

Thereby contradicting your arguments main point because, if Islam is incompatible with Western democracy and our ideas on human rights, how can a practicing Muslim possibly cherish our liberal democratic societies?

The only answer is that, like any other religion, Islam can have many interpretations including interpretations that do cherish liberal democracy. Western democracies are though certainly asking for strife if they allow in floods of immigrants from cultures that are hugely different to their own with little effort to integrate those new immigrants into the culture of their new nation. New Zealand has not allowed that to happen, of the few New Zealand victims (as opposed to visitors to NZ) who’s names have been released, one has been an Air New Zealand engineer for 18 years, another was a teenager who was playing representative soccer and another was a surgeon, all people who have integrated into NZ society.

“The only answer is that, like any other religion, Islam can have many interpretations including interpretations that do cherish liberal democracy.”

That’s a nice thought, but in practice what do we see? How many Muslim majority countries have implemented liberal democracy? Show me a backward, sh**hole country and it will be part of either the Islamic world or in Africa. Even black Africa is pulling ahead of the Muslim world except in the borderlands where the interface between Islam and Infidels is producing the inevitable horror, eg. Nigeria.

“if they allow in floods of immigrants from cultures that are hugely different to their own with little effort to integrate”

Firstly which is it multiculturalism or assimilation? The two are opposite ideas and one can’t have all of both at the same time.

Secondly, what is forgotten in these things is the notion of balance. Immigration is not a yes/no thing. Whereas moderate numbers of people from diametrically opposed cultures might be integrated, a flood might not — they might be so numerous as to prefer to preserve their own culture. We see this in the UK where we are on the verge of seeing emirates in some cities. Far from integrating they are now actively pushing out the Infidels.

But your observation is a non sequitur anyway, the correct question is; Are there practicing Muslims who support the principles of liberal democracy? Yes there are, many millions of them.

“Firstly which is it multiculturalism or assimilation?”

I didn’t say “assimilate”, I said “integrate” there are numerous peaceful multicultural societies in the world, those causing the strife in such places are fascists, people who choose to hate, but unlike the Christchurch mass murderer, most people choose not to be fascists.

In your last paragraph you’re just repeating some of the points I make in my last paragraph, perhaps you should read it again.

You need to provide a more clear idea of what you mean by Muslim “support” for liberal principles. Even if this claim is granted on faith, such a number represents a tiny percentage of Muslims. And none of them will support liberal democratic principles ahead of their Islamic faith and the directives of their religion, which is inherently illiberal. Those who do not subscribe to, or even know about such principles number in the hundreds of millions.

Where a small percentage of Muslims exists in a non-Islamic population it will grow and eventually have a disproportionate and disruptive impact on that population. Unfortunately this minority-majority principle does not seem to hold for any “reform” within Islam at this time.

One can find exceptions to every generalization. Haiti is part of Africa tho. Mayanmar was doing fine until they decided to stop creeping Islamization the harsh way. Cambodia, doing better and better every year. Ditto Vietnam and Laos. Latin America? Yeah, never the worst, but never the best either. My generalization stands.

“Yes there are, many millions of them.”

And if only we could be sure which was which. For ever liberal Muslim there are a hundred medieval barbarians. Again, look at Muslim societies and ask yourself if you want your country to be more like them. The budding emirates in the cities of Europe are unsurprisingly very much like typical Muslim cities. They say that in Bradford they now have sharia police on the streets.

those causing the strife in such places are fascists, people who choose to hate,

In the emirates it seems to be mostly the Muslims who ‘choose to hate’. A few Europeans are reacting but most just stand their looking confused as to what happened to their countries.

Ray Andrews:
“One can find exceptions to every generalization”
No, you weren’t making a generalization, your claim was: “Show me a backward, shhole country and it will be part of either the Islamic world or in Africa.” That’s a precise statement, you’re claiming that only African and Islamic countries are backward, shholes.

“Haiti is part of Africa tho. Mayanmar was doing fine until they decided to stop creeping Islamization the harsh way. Cambodia, doing better and better every year. Ditto Vietnam and Laos.”

AW – a continual flood of new immigrants from the same culture will never assimilate or integrate. The only hope for Muslim assimilation in the West is a virtual stop to all further Muslim immigration for several decades and zero tolerance to Sharia law implementation and separate education tracks for current Muslim immigrant communities.

E. Olson, as I said above:
“Western democracies are though certainly asking for strife if they allow in floods of immigrants from cultures that are hugely different to their own with little effort to integrate those new immigrants into the culture of their new nation. New Zealand has not allowed that to happen, . . “

There are dissident Muslims who come to western societies to escape their majority Muslim societies because they are dissidents from Islam and want to live liberal lives in a liberal society, and these should be welcome as refugees and immigrants.

But instead we have been accepting masses of devout, traditional Muslims who only want the material advantages of life in the West, while rejecting its culture and want to live there in parallel societies.

And we are told that trying to distinguish between the two in how we select immigrants and refugees is racist, bigoted, against human rights, etc.

And btw, education and profession alone tell you nothing about whether someone is a traditional Muslim or a liberal one.

I take “integrated” to mean “socially integrated”, not just economically integrated. I.e., do they socialise with non-Muslims, go to mixed gender social events where alcohol is served, etc. I.e., can a secular person have a normal social relationship with them, or does their life outside work revolve around their religion?

Can I invite them over for dinner as long as I don’t serve pork, is what I want to know.

” because they are dissidents from Islam and want to live liberal lives in a liberal society, and these should be welcome as refugees and immigrants”

Yes. Such immigrants can have more respect for our culture than we do. But alas Islam is the religion not of peace, but of the sword. It was founded in blood, it spread in blood. It’s agenda is world submission, which as we all know is what ‘Islam’ means. Just read the Koran as I have. It is ISIS who are the true Muslims, they do everything by the book. Sex slavery of Yazidis? Yup, absolutely Islamic, the Hadiths could not be more clear that every pagan is to be killed except that their young women may be taken as slaves.

It is true that similar barbarisms can be found in the OT, however no Christian or Jew really wants to do that kind of thing anymore whereas great numbers of Muslims really do.

Ray Andrews
When you were reading the Koran did you notice this bit?
[2:193] “You may also fight them to eliminate oppression, and to worship GOD freely. If they refrain, you shall not aggress; aggression is permitted only against the aggressors.”
Or this bit:
[2/ 256] “There is no compulsion where the religion is concerned.”?

As I’ve said above I think Europe was asking for trouble allowing a large flood of people in from very different cultures, there’s a recent article on Quillette that covers the problems in Sweden by a Swedish Muslim. In New Zealand we’ve been fortunate to be able to control immigration 100%.

With your requirement “that they go to mixed gender social events where alcohol is served” you’re deliberately setting the bar high to make the requirement religiously offensive, you may as well state that eating meat and drinking alcohol is what we do in the West and that all those that don’t eat meat (vegans etc) or drink booze aren’t integrated so don’t get a pass from you.

If people earn there way, are respectful of the social, cultural and legal requirement of my society I’m happy to have them as members of my society, I do not demand that they go to parties just because I do.

“Can I invite them over for dinner as long as I don’t serve pork, is what I want to know.”
Sure you can, but don’t bother inviting over members on the Exclusive Brethren for dinner, they don’t eat with your kind.

Tarrant’s issue was not really with any one group, but he is a Nationalist – just like any other nations people would be in the similar circumstances.

eg Much of the aboriginals anger against whites is driven by Aboriginal nationalism. India was partitioned due to religious/cultural differences. Native Fijians have discriminated against Fijian-indians resulting in a change from majority to minority. etc etc. The US wants to build a wall to attempt to retain the Americaness of southern states.

Names released so far.
Atta Elayyan, 33, had recently become a father and was chief executive and co-founder of LWA Solutions, a tech firm in Christchurch. Last year he was named in a list of the top 100 technology leaders in New Zealand. Born in Kuwait, he was also goalkeeper for the New Zealand and Canterbury futsal teams.
Ramiz Vora and his father Asif Vora were at the Al-Noor mosque on Deans Avenue on Friday afternoon when the attack unfolded. Ramiz’s wife had given birth to a girl less than a fortnight before.
Mojammel Hoq, who moved from Bangladesh a few years ago and was studying in Christchurch.
Khalid Mustafa, and his eldest son Hamza who were Syrian refugees. Another of Mr Mustafa’s sons had a six-hour operation at Christchurch hospital and was recovering in a stable condition.
Areeb Ahmed, an employee at Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
Lilik Abdul Hamid, an aircraft maintenance engineer for Air New Zealand.
Haji Daoud Nabi, 71. His son Yama Nabi confirmed to RNZ that he had been killed at Deans Ave. He had moved to New Zealand from Afghanistan in 1977 and was reportedly head of the Afghan Association in Christchurch.
Junaid Ismail was a father of three and husband. Described by his cousin as a “softly-spoken, shy, beautiful personality”.
Sayyad Milne, 14 was a student at Cashmere High School in Year 10, she had a twin sister. His father John Milne said he loved football and called him “a brave little soldier”.
Linda Armstrong, 65. Her nephew Kyron Goose has posted on Facebook said Mrs Armstrong was a grandmother with a huge heart. She often helped at refugee centres.
Mr Zesshan Raza, his father Mr Ghulam Hussain and mother Ms Karam Bibi

Announced by Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Mr Sohail Shahid. Announced by Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Syed Jahandad Ali. Announced by Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Syed Areeb Ahmed. Announced by Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr Mahbobb Haroon. Announced by Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr Naeem Rashid and his son Mr Talha Naeem. Announced by Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Naeem, who was born in Pakistan, reportedly tried to wrest the gun from the attacker.
Ali Elmadani whose daughter – Maha Elmadani, a Christchurch-based graphic designer travelling in Palestine – confirmed his death to NZ Herald.

Excellent article, Claire, well done. I only have one point of disagreement:

“It is noteworthy that the Christchurch attack was live-streamed on Facebook, reposted on YouTube and discussed on Reddit before any of these platforms had a chance to react.”

The platforms ‘have the chance’ to react to anything at any time, but they choose to be designed in such a way that they don’t and won’t react. Kara Swisher has been warning about this for years and as far as I can tell, nobody has listened. When I heard that this attack was livestreamed on Facebook, I immediately recalled her saying on Recode Decode that she told Facebook executives that ‘somebody is going to livestream a murder’, and they effectively brushed her off.

I strongly dislike the ‘rabbit hole’ response as a criticism of ‘big tech’, as I think this is exactly what the terrorist wanted, but this separate line of criticism strikes me as perfectly legitimate, and something they need to answer for.

Nice balanced essay on a terrible tragedy. One sentence stuck out in particular: “Many of the early reactions to the event have expressed legitimate anger about the lack of action taken over violent right-wing extremism.”

From what I understand the shooter expressed great admiration for Communist China, and is a huge believer in human-caused global warming, which are usually not positions advocated by the Right. This seems to be a common reaction to so many of these shootings – the media and Left always blame such tragedies on Donald Trump or right-wing extremism (and lack of gun control), and then it is very quietly determined the person is a registered Democrat, voted for Obama/Clinton (or Australian/NZ equivalents), hates Trump, likes big government programs and high taxes, and used a legally purchased gun. Also very interesting how little media coverage there is on the fact that an armed man almost certainly kept the death count down by returning fire on the shooter – can’t let such facts get in the way of the gun control narrative.

There were two attacks. in one attack only seven people were killed because an armed person at the mosque srarted shooting back and the terrorists ran away. It doesn’t surprise me that your media sources did not cover this.

There is little media coverage of the ‘unnamed armed congregant’ because he probably doesn’t exist. A National Review article [republished by Yahoo News] said this:

“………One armed congregant pursued the gunmen who opened fire during Friday prayer at his mosque in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, firing two shots at them as they sped away, the New Zealand Herald reported.

BOTTOM LINE: Only someone as gullible as E. Olson would believe these far-fetched stories and weave them into a bogus narrative of how a heroic good-man-with-a-gun saved many lives on that terrible day.

JBN – that was the early narrative I saw in a couple of places, but apparently the good citizen in NZ used the shooter’s own gun to scare him off. Yet to suggest it is unlikely to also wrong as numerous examples show:

Lots of conflicting versions of this ‘good guy’ story [no surprise, really]. In one account, the shooter dropped a shotgun at the 2nd mosque because it was out of ammunition and grabbed an assault rifle. The ‘good citizen’ then picked up the empty gun and somehow threatened the shooter with it. Does that make any sense?

With a horrific event like this, some people have a tendency to highlight those details that fit a pre-existing narrative structure, changing only the date and location and ignoring the complexity. That’s certainly the case with your good-guy-vs-bad-guy story. But that is also what happened when the synagogues in NZ closed down on Saturday in sympathy with the victims and some people said “Look, this terrible event has brought the Jews and Muslims in NZ together.” And mentioning “thoughts and prayers” is another way to fit these events into a worn-out interpretative framework.

Bottom Line: people should resist the temptation to draw simplistic lessons from events like this.

I second the comment of E Olson who points out the shooter’s 74 page manifesto professed views more in line with the left. The People’s Republic of China was his ideal government. Yet the knee jerk reaction is to proclaim him a right winger inspired by Donald Trump. And to fuel the fake news characterization of Trump as a white supremacist. Trump did not side with the tiki torch white supremacists at Charlottesville, he said there were good people on both side of the statue issue. Yet CNN knowingly perpetuates the myth that he sided with the tiki torchers, and that has become the root source of his so called white supremacy. This is fake news being used to fuel a fallacy. David Duke of the KKK recently expressed his admiriation of Rep Omar for her contempt for Jews. Trump’s support for Jews and Israel is unquestioned. White supremacist? No way.

Dreher is sufficiently self-aware that he acknowledges that he agrees with the shooter’s diagnosis of western civilization [saying that the shooter’s stated views on degeneration are ‘true’ and ‘based in….reality’] while decrying the massacre itself.

To his credit, Dreher considers the manifesto in its entirety and doesn’t cherry-pick the details, unlike you and E. Olson.

Are there odd details in this story? Of course. Tarrant traveled to Pakistan and Turkey–does that mean he is a ‘secret Muslim’? Is this a false flag event?

Tarrant also praises China–does that mean he is a Communist? Or–instead–is he admiring the ethnic homogeneity of coastal China and the brutal suppression of ethnic and religious minorities in the interior regions?

There are lots of ‘big picture’ ways to view this horrific event, besides that of Mr. Dreher. I think that the concept of ‘moral purity,’ popularized by J. Haidt, can explain Tarrant’s hatred of pollution and of immigrants–they both despoil a pristine environment. The following quote can connect the views of Dreher, Tarrant AND Trump:

“………More than any other Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump has been appealing to a particular combination of in-group loyalty and moral purity concerns. On the purity side, he often expresses disgust, often toward women and women’s bodies (e.g., Clinton’s bathroom break during a Democratic debate). But his purity appeals are most commonly in the context of group boundaries, like building walls on our national borders to prevent contamination by outsiders, who are cast as murderers and rapists, both morally and physically dirty….”https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/01/07/conservative-psychology-and-the-appeal-of-donald-trump/

JBN – While you are certainly free to criticize my “simplistic and biased” comment on an essay about a tragic event, it seems you miss the main point. My audience as a commenter at Quillette is perhaps a few thousand, most of whom will have no reason to trust my knowledge or judgment because I am an anonymous nobody, yet you ignore the widespread media reports seen by millions of viewers who trust the “experts” at CNN or the NYT when they invariably and quickly link every shooter to “right-wing” extremism and Trump, and when it later becomes apparent that the shooter is leftist or simply insane, they rarely put any significant effort into correcting their narrative that all violence is caused by Trump and lack of “common sense” gun control.

He’s a leftie! No he’s a rightie! No he’s a leftie! What he is is a guy who is so afraid of the Islamization of his culture that he’s gone berserk. Who is to blame? Himself, mostly, but in context, why is he so afraid? Perhaps because he’s watched the news over the last decade and can see where his culture is very clearly heading and he’s declared race war somewhat prematurely. Cool fact: it seems that Vermont declared war on Germany before the USA as a whole did.

Ray – I would have no problem with the media simply reporting a deranged man shot up a Mosque and killed a bunch of worshipers, but invariably they have to link every violent act to “right-wing extremism” or “neo-Nazis” or “Trump’s climate of hate” without any facts to back up such assertions. If it turns out after some investigation that the guy is Left or Right or just plain crazy they can add those details, with minimal editorializing.

Your suggestions would have more credibility if you’d stop the simplistic generalizations:

“………..link every shooter to ‘right-wing’ extremism and Trump……”
“……….all violence is caused by Trump….”

If the media report that a shooter is a right-wing extremist, at least in the US, it’s probably true:

“…..In 2018, domestic extremists killed at least 50 people in the U.S., a sharp increase from the 37 extremist-related murders documented in 2017, though still lower than the totals for 2015 (70) and 2016 (72). The 50 deaths make 2018 the fourth-deadliest year on record for domestic extremist-related killings since 1970.

The extremist-related murders in 2018 were overwhelmingly linked to right-wing extremists. Every one of the perpetrators had ties to at least one right-wing extremist movement, although one had recently switched to supporting Islamist extremism. White supremacists were responsible for the great majority of the killings, which is typically the case…..”https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018 , emphasis added

But there does seem to be the automatic insinuation don’t you agree? Perhaps a typical example was those Catholic kids and the Indian. A MAGA hat! A smirk! A smirk! Privilege! Whitey is oppressing an Indian! It’s practically genocide! And the whole of the MSM piled on with nary a fact checked.

Ok, E was being a bit theatrical, a bit of hyperbole is acceptable, but surely — and predictably — the lefties want to spin every such atrocity as the evil outgrowth of everything that’s not woke? Thus this guy is spun as right-wing when it seems he’s so mentally ill that you can’t really call him either left or right.

And yes, in the States you do have a problem with gun-nut right-white extremism, that’s just the facts of the matter. Around the world tho the huge majority of religiously based violence is Islamic, that’s just the facts of the matter too.

I haven’t drawn any conclusions about the shooter, just from his manifesto as interpreted by Mr. Dreher [I haven’t read the entire document myself]. In fact, I wouldn’t be commenting at all on this horrifying event, if Ms. Lehmann hadn’t posted this article.

I’m not inclined to cut people like Mr. Dreher and E. Olson any slack, because they are playing with fire when they imply that western civilization is somehow in a fight-to-the-death with foreign invaders, be they Islamic or Hispanic.

JBN – The ADL is a non-orthodox Jewish organization that is obviously Left-Wing, so there is certainly some potential Leftist bias in their reporting.

The vast majority of the violence they document is labeled “right-wing” White Supremacist, but the case histories they present are clearly people who are mentally ill with no clear political agenda. These “right-wingers” include a 17 year old Hitler fan who switched to Islam and ISIS fandom who killed some friends in a sleepover, and a middle-aged white shooter who killed two blacks but has a black ex-wife.

These classifications bring up some interesting questions. Do white supremacists typically have black wives? Do white supremacists typically try to join the Arab terrorist branch of the Islam faith? Why is totalitarian big government Hitler or ISIS fandom considered synonymous with being a small-government personal freedom loving “right winger”? Why is being being an anti-Semite considered “right wing” when Trump and the Republican party are the biggest supporters of Israel and the Democrats and the Left in general is increasingly Anti-Jew and Anti-Israel? Why is being anti-black considered “right-wing” when the Republicans freed the slaves and enacted all the major civil rights laws for 100 years, while the Democrats formed the KKK and blocked anti-lynching laws for 100 years? Why is anti-black considered “right-wing” when all the cities with the most black poverty and highest black violence have been totally controlled by Democrats for over 50 years?

I would suggest that this is yet another case of a Left-leaning organization which doesn’t want to face the realities that most modern day violence, racism, and anti-Semitism is taking place on the big government loving Left. Need further evidence? They don’t even have a category for Leftist violence in their record keeping.

Whatever you are trying to imply, Rod Dreher is not a “hardcore conservative.” He is an Eastern Orthodox Christian journalist, author and blogger who posts on a very mainstream and mostly nonpartisan U.S. conservative site. In no way is he a racist or Islamophobe or an alt rightist – what a ridiculous idea!
Here’s what you write: “Dreher is sufficiently self-aware that he acknowledges that he agrees with the shooter’s diagnosis of western civilization.” And this is what Dreher actually posted: “Here’s the chilling part: Everything Tarrant identifies as qualities of a disintegrating Western civilization is true… In no way do I see ‘radicalization,’ at least not remotely in the violent terms conceived of by this mass murdering scum, as the answer to the disintegration he identifies. There is never, ever any justification for what he did.” This is not even nearly the same as your claim that Dreher’s “hardcore conservative” inclinations somehow lead him to “agree” with the shooter’s diagnosis.
As if all this wasn’t enough, you then go on to try to establish a connection/link between “the views of Dreher, Tarrant AND Trump.” – a cheap and transparent use of guilt by association. (As an aside, Dreher can’t stand Trump.)

You: ‘… In no way is he [Dreher] a racist or Islamophobe or an alt rightist – what a ridiculous idea!…’

I agree! And those are labels I never used or implied.

But Dreher has said several times on his web site that, given the current field of Democratic candidates, he may be forced to vote for Trump in 2020 as self defense against liberalism. That counts as a Trump supporter, in my book.

@Jack Nimble— I think you have too much time for navel gazing. My only point was to contest the CNN driven narrative that Trump is a white supremacist and thus bears some blame for the NZ shooting. This is an absurd notion but the brain dead viewers of CNN will believe anything negative about Trump. And your quoted comments about moral purity are laughable. Trump is accused of being a bit too interested in women’s bodies, not disgusted by them. Yes, he’s concerned about border security, as am I. What do MS-13 gangs, coyotes, and drug cartels on the border have in common? Are they misunderstood nice guys or do they prey on women, children, bringing death to Americans with their drugs and violence? Are they Irish or are they Mexican? Is speaking the truth about the ethnicities of those challenging our southen border forbidden? I thought Quillette was the place we went to to speak what is unPC elsewhere.

Some interesting facts about the tiki torch guys. They applied for and had a permit to parade around the statues. The antifa guys did not have a permit. One of the tiki torch organizers is a guy by the name of Jason Kessler. He was also part of occupy Wall Street.

I was waiting for Quillette’s response to this terrorist event. I admire that it has come from the founder herself.

I note that, although she counsels us all to avoid blaming anyone but Tarrant himself, she does throw in an esoteric reference to Alexander Dugin of Russia, as having “influenced” the neo-fascism of Breivik and Tarrant. Blaming Dugin for the western alt-right is the sophisticated version of blaming Putin for Trump’s 2016 victory. In both cases, there are connections, interactions, fraternization, but in the end we are dealing with something which is very much an internal affair of the west.

For a generation, America was the core of a new world order in which all borders were supposed to dissolve in a universal regime of liberal democracy. As I see it, that world order came to an end during Obama’s second term. Trump’s attempt to reposition America as one great power among several, rather than as the guiding light of all humanity, is simply a recognition of the new situation. In America there is now a three-way struggle between conservative nationalism, anti-imperial progressivism, and the remnants of liberal globalism.

Among its many ramifications, this change has created a crisis of identity in countries like America and Australia that could formerly identify as the vanguard of liberal globalization. Instead of all nations dissolving into one global marketplace, national, regional, and civilizational identities now rule the erstwhile “third world”, while “the west” is caught between the populist revival of pre-imperial identities, and the consequences of the radical multiculturalism which made more sense when the west was the center and the vanguard of world transformation.

I see this western dilemma as the political question to which Tarrant gave an intolerable answer. His new direction is, the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from western countries, and (for his own country) a return to white Australia. That is never going to happen, but can we continue to coast along with the existing technocratic approach to immigration? And if not, what simple conception of nationhood, and of who should get to be Australian, American or European, can take the place of the racial conception (white majority to be maintained) or the globalist conception (anyone who wants can enter)?

For Australia in particular, if we do not wish to eventually be territorially divided by the forces of far more populous nations, we will need to establish some new basis for caring about each other in the way that any viable nation requires. That is the problem which exercises my mind above all, when I try to look beyond the present moment.

Even this horrific event might carry a lesson, or the challenge to become one. European countries learned a lot from their WWII history. Will Chistchurch stimulate further cohesion and integration? I doubt that very much, what I expect is the muslims now again and again, after another terrorist attack, are using Christchurch to blame the “others” that hate and mass killings have nothing to do with islam, but that it’s just human (though exceptional) behaviour. I read already about an imam, blaming the democratic tolerance and hypocrysie as the main cause of the tragedy.I also fear that the perpetrator for 100% saw his mission succeeded. More polarisation! Or is there an influental prophet that will stand up and preach a final halt to otherism??

In the UK The Guardian commentary on this atrocity has been appalling. 3 opinion pieces out before the bodies were even cold beating their well worn drums blaming white identity politics, Trump, the right wing media, calls for censorship, systemic Islamophobia etc. Nosheen Iqbal even managed to shoe horn Brexit in to her commentary. A far cry from the papers response to the Manchester arena, no calls for peace and understanding in Christchurch it seems.
The polar opposite of what Claire has written. The Guardian is purely motivated by cynical political opportunism. Nosheen Iqbal closing of “It’s not too much to ask that care and empathy be focused on the victims. Their families. Their lives.” rings particularly hollow when shes neglected to do this through out her own article. Are these commentators incapable of sincere compassion, can a tragedy not even be just that for 1 day before they attempt to politicize it?

@Andrew Worth

Andrew Worth in the comments above has done more to commemorate and acknowledge the victims in a single comment post than any of those guardian “journalists” have in any of there article.

Ahyhoo rant over, thanks for this Claire its a good example of why i come here. and thanks Andrew Worth for your posts.
.

The Guardian is intellectually and morally ossified. It’s part of the problem. For over a decade it has been driving an agenda designed to divide society and rank different groups by their supposed virtues, with some groups perpetually in the wrong while others can do no wrong. It has nothing useful to say about the Christchurch shootings or anything else. And it has no right to point the finger at others. It has a huge reach which it uses to spread propaganda that is designed to divide and radicalise.

White people are not “superior,” but I think there IS a valid perception is that Anglo and other historically white countries’ cultures are in danger of being subsumed by the rush to “multiculturalism,” which tends to serve the needs of the globalists far more than those of the locals. While the Gnomes of Brussels and Davos nod their sage heads about repopulating Europe with unassimilable hordes of North African migrants, the beleagured natives of Stockholm, Nice, London and Berlin are stuck dealing with the encampments, the no-go zones, the stabbings and the rapes. Could this unfamiliar cultural pressure conceivably cause mentally unstable whites to snap and lash out in violence? You bet!

If you like your country, can you keep your country? Or must you watch turn it into Kandahar, Mosul or Calcutta while rolling over and playing dead, ideologically speaking? This is exactly what we’re talking about when someone’s going to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Western whites are voluntarily surrendering their own heritage out of a misplaced sense of guilt for past “transgressions” against other cultures taken utterly out of the historical context of their own time. If the newcomers refuse to assimilate into their adopted country’s culture, are YOU willing to assimilate into theirs? Embrace sharia, halal, jihad, the whole 9 yards? Consider.

It should go without saying that EVERYONE condemns extremist violence from all sides. Far from excusing it, we need to look with both eyes open to understand why it keeps happening.

That hit the nail on the head. Superiority needn’t be worried about. I am not superior to my neighbor, but if she trashed her own house, then demanded to move in with me and informed me that she’d be living at my expense and that from now on she’d me making the rules, I think I’d still be permitted to decline to have her. Would that make me a neighborphobe or a #72 (my address) supremacist? Or would I simply be retaining control of my own property?

@Ray Andrews—- in other words…is Western civilization worth preserving? Undoubtedly the answer is Yes. We should not be shy about extoling the many ideals of western civ, ideals that have made the world a better, fairer place. But the PC warriors have made fighting to preserve western civ an act of white supremacy, male patriarchy and all the other tripe spewed on college campuses. Those of us who know its value are to be shamed into submission. Others’ cultures and values are to be layered over ours while we remain silent. Taking up a gun against this is certainly not the way, but speaking out must be allowed, and that includes pushing back against false narratives invented by the media.

That’s about my take. We’ve produced far and away the most liberal and free societies that have ever existed, but we are cursed by this self-loathing thing. Andrew Worth posting here is a good example — we can’t Islamize too fast and if you disagree you are a fascist. Sheesh, I get into disagreements here with most of the regulars for being sentimental about Bernie. A fascist is the last thing I am. But, to the rainbow-multicultural-globalists, you have either made the destruction of your own culture your first priority, or you are a fascist. Mind, to his credit, even Mr. Worth seems to understand that one must integrate (but not assimilate!) the Muslims. I suppose that ‘integration’ means our adapting ourselves to sharia. What else? Assimilation means them adapting to the host country, and we’d not want to assimilate them, so ‘integration’ must mean us adapting to them.

Ray Andrews:
“Andrew Worth posting here is a good example — we can’t Islamize too fast and if you disagree you are a fascist.”

Don’t suppose you could argue the points I make rather than constructing strawmen, or is that too hard?

“A fascist is the last thing I am.”

If you look up “fascism” you’ll find the definitions poorly defined with people trying to put all sorts of conditions on it to exclude themselves or their allies. I’m defining it as:
A form of bigotry in which a person exaggerates differences between the group they identify with and another group with the goal of creating hatred, discrimination and violence against the other group to facilitate their subjugation or their expulsion or elimination from the fascists society.

So I can include all the bigots trying to subjugate or eliminate the groups they hate: Toxic feminists, all those SJW that want white men to be punished for the crime of being white men, those that want to get rid of those of another race or religion from their society etc.

You can decide whether or not you fit the bill.

“. . even Mr. Worth seems to understand that one must integrate (but not assimilate!) the Muslims.”

If integration is successful assimilation is something that happens naturally over time, the melting pot takes over.

Well sir, you seem more interested in spewing hate yourself than in making points. I’d love to discuss the subject with you, but you do seem to presuppose that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically a fascist, and I hold to the rule that there is no point in discussing anything with people you consider to be evil or dishonest. What is there to discuss with such people?

“A form of bigotry in which a person exaggerates differences between the group they identify with and another group with the goal of creating hatred, discrimination and violence against the other group to facilitate their subjugation or their expulsion or elimination from the fascists society.”

That’s nothing like any definition of fascism I’ve ever seen. But ‘bigotry’ is well defined:

big·ot·ry
/ˈbiɡətrē/
noun
noun: bigotry; plural noun: bigotries

intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.

So it would seem to me that you are a bigot since you drip intolerance to my opinions, for example, and seem very quick to throw nasty labels around, no? Can you conceive of the notion that a person might want to preserve their culture and heritage without hating, discriminating, being violent, subjugating, expelling or eliminating anyone?

I can assure you that I don’t hate Muslims, in fact I respect the fact that they take their culture far more seriously than we take ours. They have no desire to be like us nor do they consider their own cultural suicide to be fashionable. They rather seek to dominate the world as any Muslim will tell you. Frankly there are times when I look forward to it — they at least know how many genders there are.

I myself would rather not be dominated. I face the plain fact that their culture is very different from ours, and is in fact incompatible with ours. Since we enjoy surrender, and they enjoy victory, it seems to me that too many Muslims in any western country can have only one outcome, and I’d prefer that didn’t happen. This is not hate, it is a personal preference for self-preservation. You are welcome to have different goals and I’ll not throw a single pejorative at you if you do.

“Toxic feminists, all those SJW that want white men to be punished for the crime of being white men”

Interesting! You break the mold there. Islamophiles are usually big into self-hatred of masculinity too. So you don’t feel guilty for being a white man? But surely you are guilty for every sin ever committed by a European? Surely everything that has ever gone wrong in the 3d world is your fault? No? Are you only half PC?

“If integration is successful assimilation is something that happens naturally over time, the melting pot takes over.”

I could not agree more. However to achieve this we should be careful not to try to absorb too many people at once. Otherwise immigrants will ghettoize themselves quite irrespective of ‘racism’ — they will prefer to live among their own kind. They will feel less inclination to integrate/assimilate if they can live comfortably in mini emirates. This is nothing but common sense, hate and bigotry have nothing to do with it.

Ray Andrews:
“. . you do seem to presuppose that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically a fascist, . . ”

Not at all, I’ve given what I think is a reasonable definition, I am not projecting that definition onto you or anyone else and you haven’t claimed that you fit that definition.

“So it would seem to me that you are a bigot since you drip intolerance to my opinions,”

Sorry, I had to laugh when I read that. I suppose that in your opinion I might be intolerant, but the length of our discussion and the fact I take your comments seriously and reply to them seriously I think demonstrates that I am not intolerant of your opinions, I just disagree with some of them. Can I ask you to look at your accusation of my being intolerant and compare it to a lefty snowflakes way of accusing those expressing an honest opinion contrary to snowflake opinion of being intolerant?

“They rather seek to dominate the world as any Muslim will tell you.”

Really? I expect you’ll want to qualify that.

I fired a link at Sean below:
“Unlike the Muslim immigrants in Europe who live in ghetto-like areas, Muslim immigrants to the United States are highly dispersed. The only town in the country with a substantial concentration of Muslim immigrants is Dearborn, Mich., where they make up perhaps 30 percent of the population; and one part of Dearborn, called Southend, is about 97 percent Muslim. In contrast, efforts at Muslim-only towns (such as Baladullah, a Muslim enclave in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California) consist mainly of African-American converts to Islam.”
and:
“Muslim immigrants of recent years boast exceptionally high levels of education. A 1999 survey found that 52 percent of them have a graduate degree.8 South Asians appear to the best educated of all. Exceptions to this pattern do exist, of course: Yemeni farmers, Iraqi soldiers, and most illegal immigrants are far less educated. The relatively high level of education results in part from the Muslim community in North America drawing disproportionately from the elites. Very often it is the best-educated who come to settle in the United States or Canada.

Immigrant Muslims tend to concentrate in the professional and entrepreneurial vocations, and especially in engineering and medicine, which jointly employ about one-third of Muslims in the United States. With such high educational levels, it comes as no surprise that many members of this community have done well; average income for Muslims appears to be higher than the U.S. national average. Although new, the community boasts a significant number of millionaires as well as many other accomplished individuals (including one Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Ahmed H. Zewail, and such notables as the movie actor Omar Sharif, the professional basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon, and the model Iman). Muslim Americans proudly say that theirs is “the richest Muslim society on Earth,”9 and they are right; more than that, it may be the most accomplished.”

The US is so large, and has proportionately so few Muslims, that it is in an entirely different position than the small countries of Europe, or countries like Canada and Australia with populations concentrated in a few large cities.

And yet, one US city has attracted such large numbers it is becoming a Muslim-dominated city in a very short time.

And as I said elsewhere, economic success does not necessarily mean social integration.

Would they come to my backyard BBQ, with alcohol and mixed genders, is what I want to know.

Very well sir, you are not one to jump to conclusions as to the motives of those who disagree with your views on immigration.

“The problem is that fascists like yourself are only interested in seeing the pro-war Surah, passages that don’t suit your hate mongering ”

… but comments like that one had me mistaking you for someone who was quick to condemn. My mistake.

“They rather seek to dominate the world as any Muslim will tell you.”
Really? I expect you’ll want to qualify that.

I could tell you, but the voices of Muslims themselves might be more convincing. Just ask your Muslim friends, or read the Koran for yourself. You may as well doubt that Jews believe that God gave Canaan to them.

“Muslim immigrants to the United States are highly dispersed”

That appears to be generally true, and I’d say it’s part of the reason the US has little jihadism. But that rather makes my point — to the extent that Muslims live with Muslims and reinforce their believe system, to that extent there will be trouble.

“So it looks to me like Muslims are integrating very well in the US and are an asset to America, contrary to your of biases.”

My bias is to look at the plain facts. Yup, so far, so good in America, they’ve mostly avoided trouble. But will it last? Some say that Europe is already doomed. I myself would say that it is better not to sleep with cobras than to congratulate oneself for having survived another night. You know, the facts you quote as to the outcomes of 1st generation immigrants stand on their own merits, but if what we see in Europe is any indication, it’s the 2nd and 3d generation that tend to go fundamentalist.

The religious wars precipitated by the spread of printing were the sars of Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

In the first feverish years of the Reformation, Central European society was constantly splintering at the edges. The Lutherans split from the Catholics, the Calvinists from the Lutherans. And then came the various Millenarian cults, each more outlandish than the last. No matter what the states did, it seemed they couldn’t regain control.

Then, in 1534, the Anabatists seized control of Munster, turning the city into a sixteenth century Jonestown. Among other things, they instituted polygamy and a kind of primitive communism. This was too much. The princes laid siege to city. Eventually, the broke its defences. Their revenge was terrible. The cages in which the ringleaders were executed still hang from the walls of Munster cathedral.

We are in the pre-1534 stage of the Internet. Our societies are splintering at the edges and the state has no idea what to do about it. If we’re not careful, our Munster is coming. And it may cost us a great deal, quite possibly including much of our freedom of conscience and expression.

Skimming through this article (and comments) it appears to come from a liberal university graduate from Point Piper [once lived there]-Rose Bay/Hampstead-Cotswolds/Dublin 4/The Hamptons-North California etc.who has no idea of the increasing hell in which others are living.
I will challenge you with one question : Why are jihad barriers being build outside Trent Bridge Cricket Ground?

Chelsea Clinton. She’s sorry. For what? Does it matter? She is just sorry. Is this the default opening line all those who oppose toxic religious ideologies need to display on a neck sign in the very near future?

The Social Justice Worriers are from the camp of the Ends Justify the Means. Can we all admit we have seen this approach before?

Damn the killer to a dark cell for life. Damn the act. Damn the evil he followed.

Do not damn free expression or civil disagreements. The alternative is what precisely?

Can we expect calls for social media to become licensed & regulated publishers? Sure, let’s have that debate in parliaments. They can be sued to bankruptcy as well. The truth is the leadership in social media organisations are not very thoughtful or wise.

Please be on guard for our freedoms. Religious wars redux are very possible on small scales replicated throughout the West. City by city it can destroy the democratic fabric faster than we can adapt.

Yes, that’s what she said, I,m sorry for you. Strange reaction. PC, I think it was (because, did she say anything wrong or offensive? No). But quite normal these days. Democratic Speak. No harm, even if unintentional! That’s now all of a sudden the sin numero uno (also not very long so, if you look further back). Okay then!

We were at friends for dinner where they showed us photos of their bicycle trip in southern Italy. One photo showed a crypt filed with skulls. These were people who, centuries ago, were beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam.

The West and Islam have been in conflict for a millennia. The subjugation of Spain where many women became sexual slaves to the conquerors, is reflected in modern times with the sexual slavery of Yazidi women and hundreds of young girls in Britain.

One could hash out the history, the siege of Vienna, that the Crusades were in fact a response to repeated Muslim incursions of Europe. The point is why is anybody surprised by this man’s actions. We have seen repeated attacks by Islamic fundamentalists in Europe; Berlin Christmas market, Nice France, where 89 were run down and killed.

This is not to justify such attacks as the NZ mosque, but rather to acknowledge, that there are those who are prepared to act if they believe the authorities are not. Mention is made of Alexandre Bissonnette and his shooting at a Quebec mosque, nothing is said about prior to his attack, there were two jihad inspired attacks on Canadians resulting in deaths. In Britain hundreds of young girls were taken into sexual slavery in a number of different cities. Some reports indicate that while these practices were known, to some extent, by social services and the police, they did not act for fear of being perceived as racist.

“Islamophobia in Canada refers to set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in Canada.” In short, to be critical of Islam in Canada could result in criminal charges. Perhaps one should rip apart the Catholic Church, they have no such protection under Canadian law.

It is the inequities of the debate that are of cause for concern. If an individual cannot be critical of Islam, as the Canadian government has seen fit to do, it serves to encourage those who feel extreme action need be taken.

@Dai: I think I know why we are so surprised! What the hell now, are we as horrible and bloodthirsty as they are? Is there no difference at all? Is it a lone wolf, or just a similar cristalizing of just two cultures at work? That’s the whole, uncomfortable truth and surprise, I fear.

You argue that the Christchurch attack is unsurprising, a response to previous Islamist attacks targeting the wrong people, but those attacks were a response to US adventurism in Iraq, targeting the wrong people, which were a response to 9/11 which was extremists response to the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia in first gulf war which was a response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which happened because Sadam felt that he could get away with his invasion because he thought he was a friend of the US since the US supported him in his unjustified war against Iran, the US supporting him in that as a result of US animosity towards Iran which was due to the “hostage crises” which was a response to years of US support of the Shah of Iran which was a response to the Shah looking after US oil interests in Iran which was a response to . . .

Exactly. The rewinding of history can go on forever. I ask myself one very simple question: I look at the Muslim world and I say: “Do I want my country to be more like them?” And I answer ‘no’. It is really so very simple: If you want your country to be more like Afghanistan, then welcome in a million Afghans. If you do not, don’t.

@ Andrew Worth: If you read the various writings and manifestos of Osama Bin Laden, you will note among them is the expressing of a desire to return to the Caliphate of the time of Moorish Spain 1000 years ago when Islam claimed much of North Africa and Mediterranean areas.

I’ve heard that the rule in Islam is that once a territory has been part of the ummah, it is part of the ummah forever, and should infidels overrun it, it is obligatory to exterminate them. That’s why Israel can never be accepted.

Thank you for this piece Claire. In the context of the blaming that you refer to I would tend to agree. I can’t see much good in blaming the likes of the media or Chelsea Clinton however I think identifying ones own responsibility for this massacre is still important as we only have agency over ourselves.

As a New Zealander, I remember well our last mass shooting 29 years ago in Aramoana, how it shocked the nation and how Jim Bolger our PM at the time also said our gun laws needed to change. And change they did, after which we stopped paying attention and went back to life as normal. We patted ourselves on the back for making sure that such a thing wouldn’t happen again and told ourselves that terrorism was something that happened overseas.

Sporadically over the last 29 years we looked at the issue of guns. We knew the law wasn’t written well and that it left gaping loopholes to put guns in the hands of people who weren’t licensed with a few clicks over the internet and that put military-style semi-automatics into the hands of people just like David Gray who committed the Aramoana massacre.

I have read many articles over the period and fell into the thinking trap of balance. I heard the police calls for changes to the law and what seemed like a reasonable response from gun lobbyists of the lack of driving need for change. They said if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it and talked about the law changes unfairly punishing responsible gun owners. I bought into these arguments at least enough to do nothing. Criminals would always find a way to get these guns and law changes do nothing.

There is of course truth to this view point and reasonableness to responsible gun owners claims which is what made it such a dangerous trap. It’s true that criminals may find a way around stricter laws but its also true they may not. In the end it’s hard to escape the idea that the Christchurch gunman was able to buy weapons to kill people in NZ that he couldn’t buy in his home country and he may have chosen NZ as his target partly for that reason.

In my opinion, in NZ, there are no reasons for the private ownership and use of military style semi-automatic weapons that outweigh even the possibility of preventing another mass shooting. Of course others will disagree and that is your right but I am responsible for not acting on my convictions and must accept that and guns are just one of the areas I must reflect on my thoughts and actions.

To borrow from Issac Asimov, the people who think that gun restrictions will stop mass shootings are wrong and people who think that criminals will always be able to access firearms no matter what the restrictions are also wrong but the person that thinks that both are equally wrong is wronger than both and sadly I think that person was me.

I’m a kiwi too, with no personal interest in guns. This evil c*** was an intelligent, careful and calculating loner like Breivik. He built IED’s (that were diffused). If he had not had access to semi automatic guns he would have likely just built multiple large IED’s instead and would possibly have killed far more people – I suspect that limitations of guns may have actually saved lives in this case. I am also unaware of any other killing using semi-automatic weapons in NZ in recent decades (though it is possible there have been some). They are obviously not a significant threat in general, but at the same time I don’t see any real benefit to their ownership by the general public.

Also consider that starting with no knowledge or skills but with access to the internet, a basic machine shop, bullets and a barrel (the tricky parts) you can build an automatic weapon within a month or two of starting, probably less given online info. It only requires 1930’s level technology. Banning these weapons would not stop a motivated and capable nutter.

If a person is determined to go out and kill large numbers of people with no regard to the consequences to himself or the wider community he will find a way to kill lots of people. The main reason these mass killings are so rare is that so few people have the inclination to kill lots of people, not because weapons are unavailable, in modern society weapons are all around us.
The problem is these few individuals, how to stop them developing the motivation to act in this way or keeping them out of the country if they already have this desire to kill is the challenge. I don’t have a good answer, they’re usually misfits who feel alienated from society or “fascists” who demonize a group whose members they’ve never even met.
You start thinking along the lines of encourage people to watch out for people they know that are becoming radicalized, and if worried report them, but then you quickly end up getting into Big Brother territory.

@Andrew and @Foyle … I think both of these points are important and neither is completely solvable. You are right in that thanks in part to capitalism we have global value added supply chains that enable me to listen to my favourite music anywhere in the world at any time which is fantastic but also let me kill a lot of people quickly and easily which is not so great.

But the stark difference between a car and a gun is that one has massive RnD going into making it safer and the other in making it better at killing. And while an IED may well have killed many people, they are generally nowhere near as reliable as an AR-15, it’s much harder to become famous live streaming on facebook and I hope at least I can’t get it delivered same-day online.

There is also no way we can also solve the problem of these few members of society motivated to kill without going down the dark paths you mentioned which somewhat defeat the purpose. I feel the best approach is to take action to help mitigate some of the risk. To place obstacles in the way of killing while finding ways to reach these groups and bring them back into society. It’s a poor answer and solves nothing but might make things a little better.

I think my main point though was that I abdicated my responsibility to consider and act on these things and so must take responsibility for that, even if my impact wouldn’t change anything.

Very good. I hope the numbers of violent ethno-nationalists (always, I guess, something of an international movement) are not growing. What is certain is that a small number of people can have much more impact than before. I did some googling recently on Ernst Zundel, who was charged with hate crimes in Canada decades ago. He had a reputable career in downtown Toronto, and he kept his political activities from many friends and family. That in itself would be very difficult today for anyone using the internet. What resources did he have to reach out to strangers? Maybe placing an ad in a pre-existing neo-Nazi newspaper, and then printing off a newsletter of his own on something like a Gestetner machine. Does anyone else remember that? It would be hard to even get in touch with 100 people in all of Canada; and then to succeed in persuading some of them to commit violence? I would think almost impossible. They were like Japanese soldiers found in an isolated spot years after the war: they would only plan an attack if they were confident they had many troops with them; and it seemed that they never would.

I can’t see Alexandr Dugin has had any more influence on the massacre than Chelsea had. In fact, though a slavofile and devout orthodox christian, he has nothing against the presence of muslims and the practicing of their faith in mosques (unlike the Swiss)in Russia, as long as done in a segregated way.

Thereby contradicting your arguments main point because, if Islam is incompatible with Western democracy and our ideas on human rights, how can a practicing Muslim possibly cherish our liberal democratic societies?

I had commented above but looks like it’s stuck in moderation because of too many hot links. But a good point, and one I had thought about as I was quoting Mansur.

However, “one swallow does not a summer make”. That there are a few more or less rational Muslims – or Jews or Christians – does not necessarily mean that they all are: one kind of has to consider which percentage of each group are in each category. You may wish to take a gander at the Pew Forum data on both Muslims (pewforum; 2013/04/30; the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/) and other religions (pewforum; /2008/06/01/; u-s-religious-landscape-survey-religious-beliefs-and-practices/) to see the very wide disparities on that score.

But one salient, seminal, and quite profound difference between Islam and Christianity is the higher degree of literalism in the former; a quote (slate; 2016/08/; shadi-hamid-on-islamic-exceptionalism) from Muslim Shadi Hamid who wrote “Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World”:

Christianity without Christ loses its meaning; you can be culturally Christian or nominally Christian, but the theological content isn’t really there. It’s the same thing with Islam, and that leads to the other factor that I talk about in the book in regards to exceptionalism: Muslims don’t just believe that the Quran is the word of God; they believe it is God’s actual speech. That might sound like a semantic difference, but I think it’s actually really important.

And it’s the heavy reliance on literalism in Islam that is particularly problematic as evidenced by the Atlantic quote above. No doubt many Christians also see the Bible as “inspired by God”, but not every last word of it is seen as “Jehovah’s actual speech” – far more “wiggle room”. In addition, a great many Christians have spent no small amount of effort “walking back” from the literalist position, and have recognized the serious pitfalls in that outlook. See the Clergy Letter Project which is subscribed to by Buddhist & Jewish groups as well as by many Christian ones, although no Muslim ones; wonder why that might be. And see too a quote from a Canadian “atheist-Christian” priestess, Greta Vosper (thecanadianencyclopedia; /new-views-of-christ):

It’s beyond time for liberal Christianity, whose heritage and responsibility this all is, to act, writes Vosper. “Those who recognize the Bible’s claim to be the [literal] word of God as the monster in the tub with the baby,” are the ones who must throw that monster out with the bathwater. And that means, besides other painful changes, a real, radical look at the words and deeds of the faith’s central figure.

Christianity has had its reformation where it, more or less, tempered many of the worst of its tenets – still quite some distance to go – and it is clearly still in that process. But it is still rather decidedly moot whether Islam itself is hermetically sealed against any and all evolution in that direction. As Anne Marie Waters cogently put it in a tweet several years ago:

Except it’s not one swallow, I think the Mustafa Panshiri, who recently had a Quillette article would also qualify as a Muslim who cherishes the liberal society he lives in, then there are the 50,000 Muslims that are happy to live as New Zealanders, then there’s the vast majority of the 3 million plus Muslims happy to live in America as part of the vast range of cultures in the US, then there are the Majority of Muslims in Europe, happy to live in European cultures, then there are all the Muslims around the world happily living in more liberal Muslim counties like Tunisia, then there are those living under more repressive governments that want more liberalization, then there are those living in peaceful countries with large Muslim population living with large populations of those of other faiths, Muslim populations you never hear about because there’s nothing to report: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Ethiopia, etc.

As I keep pointing out, and people keep ignoring, it’s only the relatively few places where there is strife that media followers ever hear about.

Islam is diverse, you only have to go to the international Pew surveys to discover that Albanian Muslims (for instance) have a very different attitude towards many moral issues than Saudi Muslims, the claims that a monolithic and literal interpretation of what being Muslim is is required to be Muslim is just wrong.

The globally average position a Muslim takes on moral issues is different to that taken by the globally average position taken by Christians, but as all good readers that follow Quillette know, there’s nothing wrong with women and men, on average, seeing things differently to each other, or black and white people, on average, seeing things differently to each, differences are to be expected, what’s important is not going down the road of identity politics and demanding people abandon free choice and start abiding by other peoples standards, ultimately the population of a country gets its way on what the laws should be, so we can expect laws in Venezuela to change ditto for laws in other countries that are too repressive for the population eg Algeria.
If Muslims want to live as Muslims but with more liberal mindsets, that’s what they’ll do, authority can hold the majority of a population to a standard set by those in authority unless that population is willing.

You think Western liberalism provides a better life than the authoritarian rule that exists in more repressive Islamic nations? I think so too, and so evidently do many Muslims given the opportunity.

“…then there’s the vast majority of the 3 million plus Muslims happy to live in America as part of the vast range of cultures in the US, then there are the Majority of Muslims in Europe, happy to live in European cultures,…”

Are they though? By this I mean I am sure they are happy living in western countries with the much higher standard of living, free welfare, free housing, free healthcare (Europe anyway) than the vast majority of Muslim majority countries.

But are they ‘happy’ living as part of the vast range of cultures? There are many Muslim ghettos (and many other ethnic ghettos) where immigrants have lived there for years and speak nothing of the host country language. In the larger cities with large Muslim communities they could be living in the home country when you look at the street/shop signs, the languages spoken, the manner of dress and the acceptable behaviour. Some of these areas use their own local sharia courts for the administration of divorce law and disputes.

Sean
From the link below:
“Unlike the Muslim immigrants in Europe who live in ghetto-like areas, Muslim immigrants to the United States are highly dispersed. The only town in the country with a substantial concentration of Muslim immigrants is Dearborn, Mich., where they make up perhaps 30 percent of the population; and one part of Dearborn, called Southend, is about 97 percent Muslim. In contrast, efforts at Muslim-only towns (such as Baladullah, a Muslim enclave in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California) consist mainly of African-American converts to Islam.”
and:
“Muslim immigrants of recent years boast exceptionally high levels of education. A 1999 survey found that 52 percent of them have a graduate degree.8 South Asians appear to the best educated of all. Exceptions to this pattern do exist, of course: Yemeni farmers, Iraqi soldiers, and most illegal immigrants are far less educated. The relatively high level of education results in part from the Muslim community in North America drawing disproportionately from the elites. Very often it is the best-educated who come to settle in the United States or Canada.

Immigrant Muslims tend to concentrate in the professional and entrepreneurial vocations, and especially in engineering and medicine, which jointly employ about one-third of Muslims in the United States. With such high educational levels, it comes as no surprise that many members of this community have done well; average income for Muslims appears to be higher than the U.S. national average. Although new, the community boasts a significant number of millionaires as well as many other accomplished individuals (including one Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Ahmed H. Zewail, and such notables as the movie actor Omar Sharif, the professional basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon, and the model Iman). Muslim Americans proudly say that theirs is “the richest Muslim society on Earth,”9 and they are right; more than that, it may be the most accomplished.”

I suggest you check out the circumstances in Little Mogadishu ie, Minneapolis’ Somali community. The kids of the immigrants have been a major source of fighters for ISIS. This population has bred gangs that have terrorized white communities, threatening rape. They are not doing a good job integrating, even though Minnesotans have been gracious and generous in welcoming them in.

“ultimately the population of a country gets its way on what the laws should be” and ” (no?) authority can hold the majority of a population to a standard set by those in authority unless that population is willing”.

That is precisely the issue. Muslim-majority countries in which there is “nothing to report” are those where that majority is so overwhelming, the culture so homogeneous, no one contests the standards, no matter how repressive.

The trouble starts when you have different segments of the population with conflicting standards, and those segments are large enough or powerful enough to contest the standards of the majority.

When there are sub-cultures that refuse to accept the standards of the majority, either they just ignore them, or if they are large enough, eventually get governments to change the laws.

A large enough Muslim subculture in a majority secular, majority Christian culture country, will either ignore standards that go against its religion, or eventually try to change those standards to accord with the religion.

Excellent points. Other commenters here point to the Old Testament and its literal interpretation as making it as bad or worse than the Koran. But the Old Testament is eclipsed by the New Testament, wherein turning the other cheek, loving one’s enemy, seeking peace are the foundations. As a Christian I do not pay attention to messages in the Old Testament that were meaningful in BC times but are not now. But can the same be said about the Koran? Have Muslims rejected passages that command killing the Jew? Islam needs its reformation, a confrontation with, and rejection of, the many passages in the Koran that sanction hate and murder of the infidel. This will be difficult because the Koran is the unquestioned word of Allah. Muslims also need to reject the idea that Islam is meant to conquer and subjugate the world. Until Muslims confront and embrace this necessity, there will be conflict. Infidels cannot be expected to lie down and have their culture and traditions obliterated.

The true exceptionalism of islam comes from the fact that it is growing in the west – with it’s repressive control of children and women using threats of violence and ostracism (emotional/relationship violence) and high birth rates it has tools that make it immune to assimilation and integration in the (currrently) dominant western culture. That is something that has not occurred in the west previously, though Mormons and Amish present lesser examples of fundamentalist sects that a growing fast with a similar toolkit. Islam presents an existential threat to the West in the long term – though personally I suspect that technology (likely near term arrival of AI) makes basically all long term problems rather moot.

I’m in Canada, where we’re more similar to NZ and Australia than not. We’re all sparsely populated places with tight gun laws and very civil societies. We’re ‘horrified’ at mass murders when they happen…at home. But isn’t this all an easy response?

What did Lehmann say here that everyone everywhere hasn’t? Nothing. Disappointing, since ‘Quillette’ is supposed to be the one place where people can ask difficult questions. She avoided any difficult questions. Makes sense, as she wouldn’t want ‘Quillette’ branded ‘far-right’…and that’s exactly the problem. You can’t ask questions of certain topics today. To simply ask a question is to be ‘far-right,’ which is funny to me since I myself came from the far-left.

Why a mosque? Why a Western mosque today? If Muslims kill Christian church worshipers (as they do regularly worldwide), we need to ask, ‘Why?’ If a white nationalist kills worshipers in a synagogue, we need to ask, ‘Why?’ But nobody will ask, ‘Why a mosque in New Zealand in 2019?’ ostensibly because by 2019 they’re afraid of both the question and the answers. The NZ senator raised difficult issues but was skewered everywhere, including by Lehmann here.

One of many issues we need to face is that unlike Christian churches, Buddhist temples, synagogues, and other faith institutions, Western mosques are REGULARLY discovered to be teaching and preaching hate and Jihad, and to be fronts for active terror. Shouldn’t we be discussing this? Isn’t this a huge problem?

So, maybe a mosque is NOT identical to any other faith place if the faith preaches and teaches hate. Can we ask that question in the West? I have no idea whether that NZ mosque did or did not preach hate, but Islamic hate preaching and teaching in mosques, schools, and institutions is a critical but dirt-common issue that Westerners will not touch.

If Muslims were honest, they would raise the issue themselves, pledge to clean out their schools and centres of hate and Jihad, and start teaching Western values and the importance of cultural assimilation. Why don’t they? Why don’t Western leaders make them?

Is it insensitive to ask SO SOON after the attack, tragedy, and senseless loss of life? Please: hardly. Planes piloted by Muslims were still flying into the Twin Towers when Canadian left-wingers openly proclaimed that the Americans “deserved it because…” My own lovely, caring, gentle left-wing friends said it directly to me while we all watched it LIVE on TV.

Tired, tired, tired of the double standards applied to Islam and Muslims in the West and everywhere.

Sydney:
“Why a mosque? Why a Western mosque today? If Muslims kill Christian church worshipers (as they do regularly worldwide), we need to ask, ‘Why?’ If a white nationalist kills worshipers in a synagogue, we need to ask, ‘Why?’ But nobody will ask, ‘Why a mosque in New Zealand in 2019?’ ostensibly because by 2019 they’re afraid of both the question and the answers. The NZ senator raised difficult issues but was skewered everywhere, including by Lehmann here.”

Firstly he is an Australian Senator, we don’t have a senate in NZ, the senator blamed the victims of the crime for the crime happening, when these people are all New Zealanders or legal visitors to New Zealand.
You don’t have a problem with him doing that??

“Why a mosque?”

The murderer was also not a New Zealander, so I don’t accept he had even a slightly sane argument that he was acting in the interests of his country (he did argue in his manifesto that NZ, Aus etc are “European” countries, nope, we’re not part of his European centric world).

This low life was apparently something of loner, something quite common in those who commit mass murders. Often such people are “getting back” at a society they feel has been cruel to them, this particular murderer has focused his hatred on one group in society that he had no known personal links to, which is different to typical mass killers who usually strike at the very people that have most strongly affected their lives.

Why Muslims then? Perhaps in his twisted mind a way to ingratiate himself with those he most strongly identified with in society – people who voice hatred towards Muslims, who see all Muslims as evil?

You seem to work very diligently at missing the point on this issue. Think Islam needs your defense and protection? Think again.

I invite you to check out Canadian journalist Tarek Fatah; Canadian evolutionary biology professor Gad Saad; and Australian Imam Mohamad Tawhidi to start with. Three of many people who have a deeper and broader comprehension of Islam than the majority of us.

And remember this quote by Andrew Cummins: “Islamophobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

The FACT that mosques are used throughout the West as centres for teaching and fomenting hate and violence is a massive problem and one that no Western leaders will touch. Sadly, it takes a lot of the air out the ‘place of peaceful prayer’ argument.

“Three of many people who have a deeper and broader comprehension of Islam than the majority of us.”
But there are others with equally deep and broad understanding of Islam that disagree with them. So how to decide who’s more right?

For me the answer is science, specifically the science of Psychology. You see, the Koran and other Islamic religious texts aren’t all that complicated, but everyone is convinced that they have the right understanding of them and the other guy doesn’t. Dr. Jonathan Haidt explains how humans rationalize their own perspective in The Righteous Mind, and I’m certain that when it comes to looking at Islamic scripture there are numerous possible and legitimate interpretations that the righteous can extract from them, so Muslims living peacefully in Western countries, Muslims living peacefully in Muslim countries and Muslims in Iraq who’ve joined ISIS can all point to scripture and claim (and do claim) that their way of reading scripture is the right way.
Which is what I’ve been saying all along. Everyone thinks they’re being rational, that the other guy is wrong, but really everyone who has a stake is all the more prone to rationalizing because so much is at stake for them. It takes an objective scientific approach to cut through the self righteous BS. Take away the perceived justification for jihad and you’ll take away the jihad.

“Islamophobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

I can only assume that Andrew Cummins uses a different definition of “Islamophobia” than I do, my definition is equivalent to the definition of antisemitism, (hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews).or is that term “created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons” as well?

“The FACT that mosques are used throughout the West as centres for teaching and fomenting hate and violence is a massive problem and one that no Western leaders will touch.”

There are many thousands of mosques throughout the West, evidently either you’re wrong in implying that there’s a lot of fomenting of hate and violence going on, or the Muslims aren’t really interested in the hate and violence being preached to them, or Muslims just aren’t any good at hate and violence, perhaps they need lessons from you.

Sydney: “Planes piloted by Muslims were still flying into the Twin Towers when Canadian left-wingers openly proclaimed that the Americans ‘deserved it because…’ My own lovely, caring, gentle left-wing friends said it directly to me while we all watched it LIVE on TV.”

Very important point, Sydney.

In Bristol harbour area there is a museum available to public viewing free of charge. The first floor is dedicated to the progressive interpretation of Diversity, Equality and Inclusiveness. One of the banners reads: “WHEN DOES VIOLENCE BECOME A JUSTIFIABLE COURSE OF ACTION?”

Sydney, no we are not allowed to ask, and that is the problem. There is a psychpathology infecting our brains, inflicted by the PC culture. It says, if we white Christians speak up in defense of ourselves and our culture and values, we are to be shouted down in shame. We of the western civilization are guilty of….you name it…. and so are unworthy of consideration. Other cultures are better, no matter what their views and practices are. Genital mutilation? Shhhh, pretend that doesn’t happen. Subjugation of women? Well, we are to believe Muslim women are happy shrouded in tents with an eye slit. I remember watching Palestinian women screaming their “lalalalala! and handing out candy to children as they saw the towers come down on 9/11. But, no no, never a criticism of that. In this perverted PC view, we Americans deserved it. And unless this self hatred is rejected, it will be our downfall. Europeans aren’t bothering to reproduce, but their Muslims immigrants are, and by 2050 it is predicted European population will be predominantly Muslim. Is that what we want in the US? Does Canada? I hope not.

I agree about the self hatred. When you consider that most Muslim immigration has occurred only within the last 30-40 years, it is impressive what they have achieved in their endeavor to bend the western world to the Muslim ways. One of the reasons they haven’t achieved more is that their numbers have been insufficient.
However, each year immigration from Muslim countries grows and so does their influence. In another 20-30 years they will rule the west.

“Ancient religious texts can guide us towards lessons that open our minds and soften our hearts, and a long-view of history can help us understand that such events are shocking because they are so rare”

I guess this is exactly what the dispossed young male asks for : a sense of historical continuity instead of a perpetual market-driven anthropological disruption ; a repertoire of uplifting narratives and archetypes instead of a indiscriminately deconstructive, resent-driven culture war.

“Ancient religious texts can guide us towards lessons that open our minds and soften our hearts, and a long-view of history can help us understand that such events are shocking because they are so rare”

I guess this is exactly what the dispossed young male asks for : a sense of historical continuity instead of a perpetual market-driven anthropological disruption ; a repertoire of uplifting narratives and archetypes instead of a indiscriminately deconstructive, resent-driven culture war.

The guy was refering to Barry Lyndon before the mass shooting.

I think the shooter’s identification with the character is worth underlying. This movie is a magnificent work written in the pure tradition of the german Bildungsroman, the French picarescque and the British coming-of-age novel.
Remember what Bakhtine theorized : this genre reflects the self-confidence of the lower bourgeoisie and high peasantry during during the Enlightenment. It takes place in a era when the heroic virtues and nobiliary refinement were democratized, when upward mobility was accessible through effort and talent.
Schematically, the narrative is that of progress and primitive accumulation, the archetype is that of the pioneer and the class-defector. Balanced with the feeling of cultural and economic stagnation if not decline in the West, I guess the terrorrist’s citation makes sense.

What is terrible is that this young man eases his nostalgia for the Enlightenment with a fascistic imagery.

“Asking for “Sympathy and love for all Muslim communities,” and to remember the victims who “have chosen to make New Zealand their home” she reminds us that “it is their home. They are us.”

I don´t know the situation in NZ, but in Germany the majority of muslim immigrants don´t want to be “us”. And the majority have not “chosen to make Germany their home”, but they crossed the borders illegal to participate in the prosperity but not in the workload.

“They are us”… could be a typical statement from a schicophrenic individual.

Dear Claire, let me ask you one question:

In your mind, is there a legitimate place for a critical analysis of the religious-ideological construct, named Islam?

We don’t have the illegal immigration problems of Europe, we can pick the migrants we want, so we get the best.

“In your mind, is there a legitimate place for a critical analysis of the religious-ideological construct, named Islam?”

It’s one of the Abrahamic religions, with the same God as Christianity and Judaism, so it shares their mysticism. If you apply scientific analysis to any of them you end up having to resort to faith to justify your belief.

Not all Abrahamic religions are the same, some are worse than others. Analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the different strains is what “critical analysis of the religious-ideological construct” means.

Christianity is a spinoff from Judaism based on the rejection of Judaism as an ethnic, tribal religion concerned with keeping the tribe together through detailed laws governing the minutiae of everyday life, to be replaced by a universal one based on faith and morality, and has splintered over the centuries into dozens of denominations, from liberal to ultra-conservative.

Judaism has likewise split into groups from ultra-liberal Reform to ultra-Orthodox, and the latter are pretty scary. Where they are a tiny minority they can claim they are peaceful and can’t do much damage, although often come into conflict with their neighbours, but when they get to be a majority like in Israel, one sees what that looks like. They turn out to be pretty similar to Islam regarding women, gays, only their own count, a theocracy, etc.

But Islam has not split into the equivalent of large ultra-liberal, moderate, and ultra-conservative denominations, it is split on the basis of disputes over succession first, then between extremist “reformers” and mainstream. There is no large, influential, “ultra-liberal” Islam denomination equivalent to Reform Judaism.

AW
“It’s one of the Abrahamic religions, with the same God as Christianity and Judaism, so it shares their mysticism.
If you apply scientific analysis to any of them you end up having to resort to faith to justify your belief”

Why can’t you act like a grown-up? You know @ratloser was asking if it is politically correct to discuss Islam in a critical manner. Yet you decide to reply to the comment as though it meant something else.

Bob, there have been several people here making what they probably think are critical analyses of Islam. That’s right here on Claire’s site, she hasn’t been censoring their analyses so obviously such analysis here on her site is fine with her, so yes rereading, you’re right, I misinterpreted the question, thinking it might have some merit when it did not.

At Last I see some one looking at other factors not just the gun laws in NZ. Social media has a lot to answer for, it has been involved in a lot of Radicalisation latley, along with this it is been blamed for a lot more suicides than the 50 poor people that lost there lives in ChristChurch
Also the miss reporting be other forms of media is amazing, highlighting the authors personel views, there are not many actual facts with proff, today I read a News paper in Perth that had the death toll at 100!
I also see the Grand Mufti in Sydney has come out condeming the atack and blaming it on western Leaders, maybe if he had come out and condemed some of the Islamist atacks with the same amount of energy he might have eased some of the tension ,if you have ever get a chance to talk in depth to a Muslim you may be as shocked as I was to find out that if you are not a muslim your do not matter.

Exactly the words of the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs: the Democratic West does not punish their hypocrites and too tolerant politicians. The solution: islam theocracy.
On our TV in the NLs: another terrorist attack in the centre of Utrecht (they say so, even the prime minister, but it looks much more like a criminal act, we’ll see, but the terrorist spook is hovering above us simple and decent citizens).

Sorry that facts, as usual, get in the way of the prevailing narrative.
The facts are that the killer is a leftist eco- warrior trying to start a racial civil war.
He has stated such.
But don’t let that get in the way of the bigotry driving the racist narrative.

Excellent essay and point there! What’s needed are rules or guidelines like those to reduce social division. Things each of us can do, in our daily interactions, statements and our own thoughts, to counteract the drivers of division. How to reverse course.

Buddhism has some useful tools, for example meditation wherein one thinks of one’s enemies but feel love for them. Cultivating compassion across divisions.

Indeed. And His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said a few times publicly that refugees and migrants need to return to their home nations, and that the culture of the West is not their culture or their culture to alter. He’s correct.

“. . .the Dalai Lama has said a few times publicly that refugees and migrants need to return to their home nations,”

It’s not for the Dalai Lama to tell people they mustn’t flee for their lives or seek a better future for their children.

” . . and that the culture of the West is not their culture or their culture to alter.”

I agree with that, but it only tells half the story, they may prefer to live in the new culture without altering it, those of the new culture might be happy to see a bit of variety.
If you think the country you live in hasn’t had a change of culture over the last 50 years or that immigrants bringing in new culture is always a loss you’re either too young or too cocooned to see the cultural changes that go on in western society continually. I like living in a cosmopolitan country with lots of cultures creating the spice of life.

As an Australian and Queenslander I would like to see a little bit more self reflection as to this recent atrocity. I feel that some parts of the Australian media are to blame, particularly as much of it is biased, and myopic, more likely to inspire stubborn argument than genuine introspection. I was disgusted by Fraser Annings response and, possibly because I share a culture with him, I was really furious that it took a 17 year old boy to condemn him as he deserved to be condemned. I had known for a long time that my home country had a streak of racism but this incident showed once again how far we need to go.

I’d also like to say that when fundamentalist Islamists commit atrocities against others we should condemn their reasoning and the premise for their ideas but when the shoe is on the other foot we don’t get to be ‘but look what they did’. We should be grown up about it and say, you know what, maybe we should look at ourselves a bit more, maybe be a little more self critical. In this case. I bit of blame may not be such a bad thing.

A total inversion of reality when the names of Dawkins, and Harris are raised as likely contributors to this event. These people for decades have been about getting rational conversations going on these evils being perpetrated around the World. “Our only way of moving forward peacefully is through conversation to disarm our differences and prejudices. This failing we are reduced to force”.- Harris. If we are down to denigrating the likes of Dawkins, Harris, etc. as proponents of violence, sorry, the game is over. The PC suppressors of free speech have brought us to this impasse.

The irony is lost on activists that there IS a disproportionate, intense hatred directed towards English-speaking people and nations – UK, USA and Australia – by Islamist activists operating within those countries. These abusive tribalists foster hate and division rather than harmony.

The figure of 60,000 toll is a claim made by the Be Heard Project, an initiative of the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative Christian lobby group based in Washington DC. They have been unable to provide the sources they’ve used to produce this figure.

There’s no doubt the toll from the violence, both Christian and Muslim is in the many thousands, but while Boko Haram is the main protagonist on the Muslim side, the many protagonist on the Christian side is the Nigerian Army and human rights groups have solid evidence that the Nigerian army has murdered at least 8,000 Muslims, the total number of victims likely far higher.